
Class. X 

Book__: 

GqEyrigMlSr? 



CCEXRIGHT DEPOSIT: 



THE PUPIL 



Part I 



THE PUPIL, THE TEACHER 
AND THE SCHOOL 



By 

Wade Crawford Barclay 



PUBLISHING HOUSE OF THE M. E. CHURCH, SOUTH 

SMITH & LAMAR, Agents 
NASHVILLE, TENN.; DALLAS, TEX.; RICHMOND, VA. 






FIRST STANDARD MANUAL OF TEACHER TRAINING 

Copyright, 19 14, by 

WADE CRAWFORD BARCLAY 

THE PUPIL, THE TEACHER, AND THE SCHOOL 

Copyright, 191 5, by 
WADE CRAWFORD BARCLAY 

THE PUPIL 
Copyright, 19 18, by 
WADE CRAWFORD BARCLAY * ' 



NOV 22 1918 

©CU506679 



CONTENTS 
Part I 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Primacy of the Pupil 9 

II. The Pupils We Teach 18 

III. The Sunday School and Its Pupils 24 

IV. Growth 34 

V. Activity 42 

VI. Early Childhood 49 

VII. Middle Childhood 61 

VIII. Later Childhood 72 

IX. Early Youth 83 

X. Middle Youth 100 

XI. Later Youth 114 

XII. Adult Life 124 



TO THE TEACHER 

The teacher is advised to make a careful study of the plan of 
the text before beginning his work with the class. Attention is called 
to the following features : 

The Lesson Siatement. This is to form the basis of the discussion 
in the class session. Every member of the class should be required 
to have a copy of the textbook and to make diligent study of the 
entire Lesson Statement. The recitation upon it should be par- 
ticipated in by all. The teacher should encourage free discussion, 
which may be guided by questions. Neither the teacher nor any 
member of the class should monopolize the time. The recitation 
should not be considered complete until the teacher has assured 
himself that every point in the Lesson Statement is clearly grasped 
by all. 

The Constructive Task. This should involve original observation 
and thought on the part of every member of the class. Assignments 
should be made a week in advance. Reports should be read and 
graded by the teacher. If possible the reports should be handed to 
the teacher a day or two in advance of the class session. Frequently 
the teacher will find points of contact for beginning the discussion 
of the lesson in these written reports. Some two or three of the 
best reports of the previous week may be read in the class session. 
The Constructive Task is one of the most important features of the 
course and it is well for the teacher to emphasize the importance 
of thoughtful preparation of each assignment. 

Memory Assignment. The memorizing suggested under each les- 
son should be done outside of the class session, as a part of the 
lesson preparation. The teacher may occasionally drill the class on 
the memory assignment, but under no circumstances should much 
time be thus used. In the memory drills and reviews a blackboard 
will be found to be of much assistance. 

References for Supplementary Reading. It will be noted that these 
are under two heads. Some lessons have references to The Worker 
and His Work Series. This series consists of eight volumes, uni- 
form in size and style of binding. It will be to the advantage of 
every class to purchase a set of these books for its own use. In 
addition to the references cited, each member of the class should 



6 TO THE TEACHER 

read through some one of the books of this series pertaining to a 
particular department of the Sunday school. For example, those 
who are teaching or who will elect to teach Beginners should read 
The Beginners' Worker and Work ; teachers of Juniors, The Junior 
Worker and Work, and so forth. Under the second head, In the 
Library, reference is made to a limited number of the most im- 
portant books in the general field under discussion. Many of the 
titles named should be in the Worker's Library of the Sunday 
School, or in the Public Library. If they are not thus available, 
the united request of the class made to the Sunday School Board, 
or to the Public Library Board, might result in their purchase. If 
they cannot thus be made available, some members of the class may 
each be willing to invest in one or more of them. 

Teachers of this course are invited to confer freely with the author 
concerning its use. He may be addressed in care of The Methodist 
Book Concern, Cincinnati, Ohio. Suggestions and criticisms from 
teachers are invited and will be gratefully received. 



CHAPTER I 
THE PRIMACY OF THE PUPIL 

I. LESSON STATEMENT 

i. THE CHIEF FACTORS IN SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORK 

Have you ever thought about what it takes to make a Sunday 
school? We are doubtless all familiar with the remark of President 
Garfield that Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on 
the other would be a college. Would a similar definition answer 
for a Sunday school? Imagine a boy seated on one end of a be»ch 
and John H. Vincent on the other. What more would be necessary 
to constitute a Sunday school? An open-hearted pupil and a good 
teacher brought together anywhere at any time provide the chief 
requirements of what we have in mind when we speak of a Sun- 
day school. 

Besides these two factors of first importance there are others 
that also are important. Since there are many more pupils than 
there are good teachers, and since systematic plans are needed for 
bringing pupils and teachers together regularly in an advantageous 
place, as well as for other reasons, an organization is needed. Often 
when we use the term Sunday school we have in mind simply this 
necessary organization. Then, of course, the teacher is not merely 
to talk with his pupils upon any subject that may chance to occur 
to his mind. Lessons, intelligently selected, suited to the pupils' 
needs, are required. In making the lessons effective in the lives of 
the pupils there are principles and methods which should be under- 
stood and used. 

While our future study will reveal other factors of importance 
in the work of the Sunday school, these which have been named 
are entitled to be regarded as the chief factors. We may restate 
them in brief, summary form as follows: The five chief factors in 
the work of the Sunday school are: (i) the pupils, for whom the 
school exists; (2) the teachers, zt'ho come into the most direct and 
vital relationship with the pupils; (3) the materials, largely in the 
form of lessons, used by the teachers in their work for the pupils; 
(4) the principles and methods employed by the teachers in making 



io THE PUPIL 

their teaching effective in the lives of their pupils; (5) the organiza- 
tion, or institution, by which pupils and teachers are brought together 
and under the auspices of which the work is carried on. 

2. THE FIRST OF THESE FACTORS 

The head master of a famous school was once asked, "What do 
you teach in your school?" "We teach boys," was his immediate 
reply. In the thought of that teacher the pupil evidently came first. 
It should be so in every good Sunday school. Of all the factors 
entering into the making of a school the pupil is first. All else is 
for the sake of the pupil. For him the teacher spends and is spent. 
For him lessons are chosen and studied and taught. For him princi- 
ples and methods are conceived and put into practice. For him the 
Sunday school exists.. 

We may call this principle the primacy of the pupil. It has been 
stated in these words : "The needs of the pupil are the lazv of the 
school." It is the first principle and the last in efficient Sunday- 
school work. If we are to be good teachers, we must ponder this 
principle until it so takes hold of us that it will dominate all our 
thinking and all our practice. 

As teachers we have to do with life, its nurture and direction. 
As Sunday-school teachers our interest centers in the religious 
life of our pupils. Our effort is directed toward its nurture and 
development. This is our supreme interest. If we are misled into 
placing anything else first, we are caused to occupy ourselves with 
what is secondary and subordinate. This is our vital concern. If 
we turn aside from it to anything else, it is to that which in com- 
parison is external and mechanical. 

Is it clear why the interests and needs of the pupil must be placed 
first in our thinking and determine all our practice in Sunday-school 
work? It is because he is a living, free, self-acting being. His mind 
is not a blank tablet upon which we may write what we choose. 
His heart is not an empty receptacle into which we may thrust our 
treasures at will. We have no means at our command by which 
we may impose upon the child's being or insert into it the things 
we choose because they seem of value to us. His nature, and not 
our will, determines what he will receive, appropriate, and feed 
upon. 

A yearling calf will eat clover hay and thrive upon it, but a ten- 
year-old boy would starve seated before a table heaped high with 
the finest clover ever grown. A workingman will relish a New-Eng- 
land boiled dinner of corned beef and cabbage, but a baby fed upon 



THE PRIMACY OF THE PUPIL n 

it would be in danger of spasms. The principle is quite as applicable 
in the realm of the moral and religious nature as in that of the 
physical. If we are to aid the pupil in his moral and religious de- 
velopment, we must make the needs of his nature the law of our 
action. We must place him first in our thought and, seeking to dis- 
cover what his needs require, bring to him what his spiritual life 
can seize upon, take within itself, assimilate, and grow upon. 

3. IMPLICATIONS OF THE PRINCIPLE 

If we are now agreed concerning the fundamental importance of 
the principle of the primacy of the pupil, it will be well to consider 
some of its implications. In the light of this principle, how are we 
to think of the Sunday school and its work? 

1. The Purpose of the Sunday School. — The first question to 
be asked concerning the Sunday school is, What is it for? What is 
the purpose of the Sunday school? This is a simple question, easily 
answered. How would you answer it? 

Although the question is simple, a variety of answers are almost 
certain to be given in any class. The fact is that a great deal of 
confusion of thought exists upon this not only among teachers, but 
also among pastors and Sunday-school superintendents. Even 
writers upon the Sunday school disagree, and many radically differ- 
ent statements may be found in books on Sunday-school work. 
There are certain statements of the purpose of the Sunday school 
that have been made so often in conventions and elsewhere that they 
have become widely familiar. One that is likely to be given when- 
ever the question is asked in a training class is this : The purpose 
of the Sunday school is to teach the Bible. Another popular state- 
ment to the same effect is : The Sunday school is the world's great- 
est institution for popularizing the world's greatest book. Another 
and somewhat different statement is : The Sunday school is the 
Bible-teaching service of the church. 

These statements read well, and at first thought no objection may 
be made to them. In each case the purpose stated is entirely praise- 
worthy. But in the light of our governing principle we cannot 
accept any of these as sufficient statements of the purpose of the 
Sunday school. The objection to them is that they do not give first 
place to the pupil. They are centered in something else than the 
pupil. We will teach the Bible in the Sunday school, but we will do 
so because lessons from the Bible surpass all others in aiding the 
growth of the spiritual lives of our pupils. In the lives of millions 
of people the Bible has demonstrated its power to inspire and sustain 



12 THE PUPIL 

spiritual ideals. Our primary and controlling interest is the raising 
up of a generation of God-inspired men and women. Since the 
Bible will help in this more than anything else, we use it. That 
is to say, teaching the Bible in the Sunday school is a means, not 
an end. Likewise, building the church through the school is a 
means, not an end. Thus, it becomes clear that any sufficient state- 
ment of the purpose of the Sunday school must be in terms of the 
life of the pupil. None other can be accepted as satisfactory or 
sufficient. 

The purpose of the Sunday school is identical with that of our 
Master, Christ, who said : "I am come that they might have life, 
and that they might have it more abundantly." This purpose may 
be variously worded. We may say, for example, that the purpose 
of the Sunday school is to lead its pupils into Christlike living, estab- 
lishing them in filial and reverent attitudes toward God and his 
world and in Christian relations of love and helpful service to all 
their fellow men. Another form of statement that I like is this : 
The one supreme purpose of the Sunday school is the development 
and training of boys and girls, men -and women, in Christian charac- 
ter and service. 

When may a Sunday school be said to be successful? Sunday 
schools are judged by many and various standards. Often a Sunday 
school is judged to be successful because of its large membership, 
or because its sessions are entertaining, or because of its popularity 
in the community. Sometimes people do not look beyond the 

building. We have actually heard it said : " Sunday school 

has a fine building and a large attendance : it must be an excellent 
school." These are wholly inadequate tests to apply to a Sunday 
school. A school may be large, have entertaining sessions, be popu- 
lar, and hold its sessions in a fine building, yet be wholly inefficient. 
There is only one supreme test of an efficient Sunday school, and 
that is the personal test. The measure of the success of any Sun- 
day school is in terms of Christian character and service. If a 
Sunday school is fulfilling its purpose in the lives of its members, 
it is successful ; if it is not doing this, no matter how big it may be, 
how strong an organization it may have, how popular it may be in 
its community, or how complete an equipment it may possess, it is 
a failure. 

2. The Selection of Teachers. — What qualifications are to be 
required in Sunday-school teachers? How may we test our own 
fitness to answer the call of our Master to follow him in the high 
and sacred ministry of teaching? Every sincere Christian to whom 



THE PRIMACY OF THE PUPIL 13 

this call comes will ask himself the question, How can I prove my 
fitness to become one of Christ's teachers, an undershepherd of the 
great Shepherd of the sheep? 

It is accepted as a matter of course that to be one of Christ's 
teachers a person must be a sincere, devoted follower of Christ. It 
ought not to be necessary to dwell upon this ; it is so perfectly 
obvious. How could- one who does not follow Christ lead his pupils 
to be Christlike? Or, to use the Master's own striking figure, "Can 
the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into a pit?" Con- 
cerning this elemental qualification there is general agreement. It 
has not been sufficiently realized, however, that it is equally essential 
for the teacher to know child nature in order to teach effectively. 
We cannot lead our pupils into fullness of life unless we know the 
laws in accord with which the growth of the moral and religious 
life proceeds. We cannot teach effectively unless we know the laws 
of the mind's action. We cannot inspire and stimulate the growth 
of spiritual ideals in our pupils by bringing to them that to which 
they will respond unless we know the kind of reactions of which 
they are capable. There is only one way of gaining this knowledge. 
Acting upon this principle, we must place the pupil first in our 
thought and study pupil nature until we have come to understand it. 

The "lack of interest," "irresponsiveness," "dullness," and "dis- 
orderliness," of which we so often hear complaints in our Sunday- 
school pupils, especially boys, as a rule simply reflects the inability 
of teachers to deal successfully with their pupils because of a lack 
of knowledge of pupil nature. In the best of our public schools 
when a pupil is restless and disinterested or when he is disobedient 
or disorderly, the teacher, instead of taking steps toward having 
him expelled as a disturber of the peace and order of the school, 
gives herself with renewed diligence to a study of this pupil, that 
she may come to understand him better and discover the explanation 
of her failure to deal successfully with him. Likewise, in our Sun- 
day-school work we will do well if, when we observe that the boys 
or girls are disinterested and disorderly, instead of blaming "total 
depravity" or seeking some exterior explanation, we set ourselves to 
a more earnest study of the interests and needs of our pupils. 

Comparatively few of our Sunday schools succeed in holding any 
large proportion of their pupils through the "teen" years. As it is, 
the Sunday school is accomplishing more than any other agency in 
leading children and young people to a confession of Christ and into 
church membership ; but it is far from being as successful as it 
should be. In the aggregate hundreds of thousands of boys and 



i 4 THE PUPIL 

girls in their early "teens" are allowed to drift out of our Protestant 
Sunday schools every year. Many Sunday schools lose two thirds 
or even three fourths of their boys and almost as large a proportion 
of their girls during this crucial period of life. Just here is the 
greatest weakness in the work of our churches. The loss is alarm- 
ing, and the most serious feature of it all is that it is just as un- 
necessary as it is appalling. "It is not the will of your Father who 
is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish." The 
responsibility is upon those who are called to undertake this work. 
If in every church a training class might be formed, the members 
of which would set aside every hindering cause and devote them- 
selves to thorough, prolonged, and painstaking study of pupil nature 
and, later, to the other subjects of which a training course consists, 
all this might be changed. Instead of the majority of our pupils 
being lost to a Christian life we would make it possible for the will 
of our heavenly Father to be realized in saving every one to dis- 
cipleship and Christian service. 

3. The Choice of Lessons. — What shall we teach in Sunday 
school? What lessons shall be used? How shall we test the fitness 
and value of a given Sunday-school lesson? These are questions 
certain to occur to the thoughtful Sunday-school teacher. 

For long centuries in the history of education and schools students 
were subordinate to studies. Teachers centered their attention upon 
facts and truths and considered only how they might lodge them 
in the minds of their pupils. Of this process it was written, 

"We teach and teach 
Until, like drumming pedagogues, we lose 
The thought that zvhat we teach has higher ends 
Than being taught and learned." 

But gradually a change has come. It may fairly be said that now 
education denies this central place to subjects. It centers its atten- 
tion upon persons and asks, "What do the nature and needs of the 
pupils demand?" It conforms the course of study to the child 
instead of trying to conform the child to the course of study. 

As in general education so has it been in religious education. 
Formerly interest and attention was centered upon the catechism 
and the Bible. Pastors and teachers were chiefly concerned with the 
problem of how to get religious knowledge into the mind of the 
pupil. To take a modern example: The interest of those responsible 
for planning the International Uniform Lessons until very recent 
years centered upon the lesson scheme — how best to arrange courses 



THE PRIMACY OF THE PUPIL 15 

in order to cover as much as possible of the Bible in a given cycle 
and at the same time give each part of the Bible due representation. 
In late years a change has been taking place. A constantly increas- 
ing number of religious leaders center attention upon the pupil, 
his interests and needs. They have taken for their motto, "The 
need of the pupil is the law of the school." Their understanding 
of the pupil's needs determines their choice of lessons. The inter- 
est of a pupil in a lesson and its effect upon his personal ideals and 
his social efficiency are their tests of its fitness and value. In other 
words, they act upon the principle of the primacy of the pupil. This 
is our position. We believe that personality is more than lesson 
material. We believe that God is more interested in our meeting 
the moral and religious needs of our boys and girls than he is in 
the orderly division of all the Bible into lessons. 

Of all the world's literature the Bible is most perfectly fitted to 
inspire, to stimulate, and to lead life out into its finest and largest 
self-realization. No one can be ignorant of the Bible and live a rich, 
strong, Christian life. It did not come into existence all at once; 
it was a growth of centuries. It has in it a wide variety of lesson 
material. It is therefore entirely reasonable that we should allow, 
the developing nature of the pupil, rather than exterior considera- 
tions, to determine when each of the several parts of the Bible 
shall be brought to him in the form of lessons. 

If the religious needs of the pupil demand lesson materials not 
contained in the Bible, our governing principle requires us to provide 
them. 

4. Principles and Methods. — By what test may we determine the 
value of methods and plans proposed for use in Sunday-school teach- 
ing? Innumerable devices are suggested for use in the Sunday 
school. How may we determine their worth? In the light of the 
principle we have proposed no plans or methods are to be approved 
unless they prove to be effective in enabling the teacher to influence 
the life of the pupil. A given principle is to be accepted not because 
of its ancient origin, nor because of the reputation of an educator 
who urges its importance, but only because of its results in life. 
The question to be asked is, Does it work? As Professor Coe has 
well said: "In large part educational laws originate in the child 
and find their point of application in the teacher. In a true sense 
the child gives laws and the teacher obeys/' 

Let us take an illustration from Sunday-school administration. 
A favorite plan in the past in both small and large schools has been 
for the entire school to meet together in a mass assembly. The 



16 THE PUPIL 

wisdom of this plan is challenged. There is a growing belief that 
it is better for each department to meet separately. The statements 
most commonly heard in defense of a single assembly for the whole 
school are these: "I like to see my school all together; it makes so 
much better an appearance." "The school seems so much bigger 
when it meets all together." "Our church building as arranged at 
present will not permit the various departments to assemble sepa- 
rately, and we do not want to change our building." As reasons 
these statements are superficial and trivial. The real question to 
be asked is, Which plan enables the Sunday school to do its work 
for its pupils most effectively? If the answer to this question is 
clear, nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of ultimate 
realization of the better plan. 

II. CONSTRUCTIVE TASK 

(Before reading the "Lesson Statement" write your own 
statement in answer to the first question. After studying 
the "Lesson Statement" write a second and revised state- 
ment.) 

i. What does it take to make a Sunday school? 

2. Think of the Sunday school with which you are best 
acquainted : 

a. What seems to be placed first in the plans and work 
of the school? 

b. What do the boys and girls think of the Sunday 
school ? 

c. Is the Sunday school a successful one? Why do you 
think it is or is not? 

d. Has the Sunday school worked out a clear statement 
of its purpose and so published it that all know its aims? 
Would it not be a good plan to do so ? 

III. MEMORY SELECTION 

"Come to me, O ye children! 

For I hear you at your play, 
And the questions that perplexed me 
Have vanished quite away. 

"For what are all our contrivings 
And the wisdom of our books, 
When compared with your caresses 
And the gladness of your looks? 






THE PRIMACY OF THE PUPIL 17 

% "Ye are better than all the ballads 

That ever were sung or said ; 
For ye are living poems, 
And all the rest are dead." 

— Longfellow. 

The purpose of the Sunday school — The one supreme 
purpose of the Sunday school is the development and train- 
ing of boys and girls, men and women in Christian charac- 
ter and service. 

IV. REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

I. In "The Worker and His Work" Series 

1. The central position of the pupil: Intermediate Worker and Work, 

p. 70. 

2. The determination of Lesson Materials: Junior Worker and Work 

pp. 88, 89. 
II. In the Library 

1. Education as development of life: Education in Religion and Morals, 

Coe, Chap. VII. 

2. The personal ideal in Sunday-school work: Efficiency in the Sunday 

School, Cope, Chap. VIII. 



CHAPTER II 
THE PUPILS WE TEACH 

I. LESSON STATEMENT 

When the infant Moses, rescued from the Nile by Pharaoh's 
daughter, was delivered to the Hebrew woman whom Miriam had 
brought as a nurse, the Egyptian gave her this charge, "Take this 
child and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages." A 
similar responsibility is laid upon the Sunday school. "Take these 
pupils," we say to the Sunday school officers and teachers, "and 
nurture and train them in Christian character and service." 

i. THE CHURCH AND THE CHILD 

i. Jesus and the Child. — First of all, it should be emphasized 
that in undertaking this service the Sunday school and the church 
are true to the implications of Christ's teaching. 

There is no more beautiful picture in the Gospels than the scene 
wherein the mothers brought their little ones to the Saviour for his 
blessing. The words of the Master, in rebuke of those who objected, 
clearly define the relation of little children to Christ's Kingdom. 
"Suffer the little children to come unto me," he said, "and forbid 
them not: for of such is the kingdom of God" (Mark 10. 14). 
"Of such" is a possessive. It is as if he had said of children as of 
"the poor in spirit," "theirs is the kingdom." On another occasion, 
it will be remembered, the disciples disputed as to who should be 
greatest in the Kingdom. "And Jesus called a little child unto him, 
and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, 
except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not 
enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 18. 2, 3). That is, speak- 
ing to adults, he declared they must have the child spirit — be like 
children — or fail to enter the Kingdom. Once let the teaching of 
the Master be appreciated at its full value, and accepted with all its 
implications, and the church will realize that her greatest responsi- 
bility is for the nurture and training of childhood and youth. 

2. The Former Attitude of the Church. — Unfortunately there 
has been much confusion of thought within the church concerning 

18 



THE PUPILS WE TEACH 19 

the religious nature of the child. The early church was true to 
Christ's teaching concerning the child. Little children were received 
into church membership and were given the most careful and sys- 
tematic training. Whole families of children grew up within the 
church. From infancy they thought of themselves as members of 
the flock of Christ. Their dearest desire was that they might be 
obedient and loyal followers of the divine Shepherd. Throughout 
all the Christian centuries there have always been those who have 
thus thought of child nature and who have brought up their chil- 
dren, in accordance with the apostolic precept, "in the nurture and 
admonition of the Lord." 

In mediaeval times a large section of the church became imbued 
with the teaching of the corruption of human nature. Man's fallen 
estate was emphasized, the sinful tendencies of human nature were 
magnified and the tendencies to righteousness and goodness minim- 
ized. The doctrine of the total depravity of human nature became 
almost an obsession with many theologians and religious teachers. 
For the most part theologians had adult men and women in mind. 
Children had little place in their systems of doctrine. By implica- 
tion what they declared to be true of adults was assumed also to 
be true of children. 

These teachings were emphasized and developed by John Calvin, 
one of the later leaders of the Protestant Reformation. He declared 
positively and unequivocally that little children are lost, children not 
of God but of Satan, and that hell is filled with infants who have died 
in an unsaved state. This teaching became very widespread and even to 
the present day influences the thought and attitude of many members 
of the church. Other churches than those that owe their existence 
directly to the work of Calvin have been affected by his teaching. 
Most of the early Methodist leaders, including John Wesley, the 
founder of Methodism, were in theology followers of Arminius. The 
Arminian teaching is that little children are saved, being recipients "of 
the unconditional benefits of the atonement" of Christ. This has 
always been the theological position of the church. Despite this fact, 
the influence of Calvinism has been strong and has operated in the 
past to undermine and at some times almost to paralyze the work 
of the church in the religious nurture of children, 

3. The Recent Attitude of the Church. — In recent times the 
tendency has been strong to return to the thought of Christ and to 
develop a program based upon his teaching. An influential factor 
in this movement was the epoch-making book, Christian Nurture, 
written by Horace Bushnell in 1847. Bushnell's position was that 



20 THE PUPIL 

children should be brought up as Christians and should never know 
themselves to be otherwise. Today it may be said that almost uni- 
versally among Protestants little children are believed to be in a 
state of favor with God. The Holy Spirit is continually present in 
their hearts from earliest consciousness. Thus they have a germinal 
spiritual life that needs only proper nurture and development, and 
in time the assent and effort of the free personal will, to become 
dominant. This all-important process of moral and religious nurture 
and training of childhood and youth is the first and greatest task 
of the church. 1 

2. CHILD STUDY AND ITS RESULTS 

i. Method of Approach. — Much of the difficulty and misunder- 
standing concerning child nature in the past has resulted from the 
method of approach to the subject. Child nature has been viewed 
from the standpoint of doctrine. The child has been dogmatized 
about instead of being studied. The custom has prevailed of going 
to bulky theologies, much of whose contents has been handed down 
from the writings of priests and monks of pre-Reformation times 
who had no children of their own and had little opportunity of 
knowing child nature. Their utterances have been regarded as 



*A statement of this view by John T. McFarland, which because of its 
strength and clearness should become a classic in the literature of the subject, 
is as follows: 

"Christ meets the soul with his redemptive grace the moment it touches upon 
the shores of time; and every child born into this world comes into life under 
the healing shadow of the cross. Only upon that supposition was Jesus him- 
self justified in snying cf little children, 'Of such is the kingdom of heaven.' 
If the child is alienated from God and is in the bonds of iniquity from the 
beginning, he cannot be regarded as in any sense representing God's kingdom 
of holiness. Consequently, I insist that we shall begin with the child where 
Christ began with him and recognize him as a child of God and treat him as 
such. . . . And this faith in the standing of the child in Gcd's kingdom is 
basic in religious education. . . . Education is not creation. We must have the 
raw materials upon which to work. And education deals not with dead but 
living things. The physical trainer must have a living body with which to 
work. A corpse should K. sent to the cemetery, not to the gymnasium. The 
educator of mind must have a living mind, having capacity for receiving knowl- 
edge, and powers and faculties capable of being drawn out and exercised. . . . 
Religious education assumes the existence of a living soul having spiritual 
faculties, a nature capable of moral perception and understanding and action. 
A dead soul, if we can conceive of such a thing, may be an interesting subject 
for theological autopsy and dissection, but not for religious education. This 
thought is fundamental to our work as religious educators. The Sunday school 
is not a morgue but a school that deals with spiritual life. The soul does not 
come into the world spiritually stillborn, but alive, having in it all the latencies 
of immortality, holding an infolded life capable of infinite unfolding into 
spiritual strength and beauty. Let no theological mists obscure this fact. 
Our work in religious education begins with life and deals always with spiritual 
vitalities. The children whom God has given us are the living children of the 
living God. Christ declared that they belonged to his kingdom. He called them 
his lambs, and he commands us to feed them. Not the dead, but the living 
may be fed." 



THE PUPILS WE TEACH 21 

authoritative. When a doctrinal statement has been called in 
question it has seldom occurred to anyone to go to the child himself ; 
by force of long habit resort has been had to one's standard volume 
of systematic theology. In recent years a more valid method of 
approach has been adopted. It has come to be generally recognized 
that here, also, the principle of the primacy of the person must be 
observed. We go to the child himself for information. We observe 
Froebers motto, "Come, let us live with our children." We seek to 
be true to it in so acquainting ourselves with children that we know 
them through and through. 

2. The Science of Child Study. — Child study, or, as it has some- 
times been called, paidology, is related to the more general science, 
psychology. Psychology concerns itself principally with the study 
of the mind and its processes. It discovers, describes, classifies, and 
seeks to explain the workings of the mind. Child study concerns 
itself with the study of the developing nature of the child. Numer- 
ous scholarly men, scientific observers trained in accuracy of method 
and exactness of observation and statement, have studied children 
and have set down the results of their study. Among the many 
advances of recent years none have had in them larger possibility 
of help to religious workers. The debt of the church to the 
pioneers in the field of scientific child study is very great and should 
be thankfully acknowledged. It is not maintained that the study 
has as yet reached the stage of an exact science. On some lines 
the data which have been gathered are as yet insufficient upon 
which to base final conclusions, but more are constantly being 
gathered. As yet it is inevitable that there should sometimes be 
divergent, possibly even contradictory, statements. Nevertheless, 
rapid and most encouraging progress has been made toward accurate 
knowledge of child nature. 

Child study is a broad subject. It has to do with the child in 
every aspect of his being and in all of his relationships. Not for- 
getting that the child with his complex nature is a unit, we are 
chiefly concerned with him as a religious being. This narrower 
study is commonly called religious psychology. 

3. Service and Results of Child Study. — Study of the child has 
shown that every child at the beginning of his life is possessed of 
an original capital consisting of capacities or natural abilities, and 
certain tendencies or impulses or instincts. To acquaint the teacher 
with these, to aid him to understand their significance and how the 
development of the child may be guided in such a way that he may 
completely realize all his capacities, is the service of child study. 



22 THE PUPIL 

Our study of the pupil in the successive periods of his develop- 
ing life will aim to give this acquaintance and understanding. Here 
we indicate very briefly some of the general findings of the scientific 
study of the child which reenforce the teaching of the church and 
demonstrate that it rests upon a sound basis. 

The natural impulses and instincts of the child are neither evil 
nor good. They are nonmoral, but they are the raw material out 
of which good or evil, virtue or vice is certain ultimately to issue. 
There are certain impulses that may be said to be partly good and 
partly bad in their tendency ; if unregulated, they are almost certain 
to issue in evil conduct, bad habits, and immoral character. Right 
training can transform impulses that have in them possibilities of 
evil into positive moral assets. The impulse that the child has, for 
example, to defend himself and to fight for his possessions, if un- 
regulated, may make him quarrelsome, abusive and tyrannical ; regu- 
lated and trained it makes him a courageous defender of the right. 
There was shrewd observation back of Plato's figure of the white 
and black steeds and for his observation, "The horses of the soul's 
chariot pull different ways." Religious education must involve con- 
structive development and direction of native instincts. 

The child has a religious nature. Wide research has found man 
everywhere to have been a religious being. It is human to be reli- 
gious and something less than human not to be religious. Man 
is prone to seek God as are the sparks to fly upward. Child study 
finds that the child shares the religious inheritance of the race. 
As a latent element in the nature of the child there is a capacity 
for religion, plus certain impulses which guarantee that in some 
degree and measure the developed human being is bound to be reli- 
gious. It is the work of religious nurture to bring the child into 
possession of his complete religious inheritance as a member of the 
human race. 

3. THE CERTAIN HOPE 

In its work of the religious nurture of the child the church, if 
it is given anything like a fair chance by the home and the com- 
munity, has certain hope of success. There is no other part of its 
work in which the church may engage in such sure confidence as 
this. The law of progress upward is written in the very nature 
of the child. God is on the side of the Sunday school. Or, better, 
the Sunday school which understands its work to be that of assist- 
ing the religious development of the pupil is at work with God. 
It is on God's side. He who works with God cannot fail. 



THE PUPILS WE TEACH 23 



II. CONSTRUCTIVE TASK 

(Before reading the "Lesson Statement" write your own 
statement on the first item that follows. After studying 
the "Lesson Statement" write on the two remaining items.) 

1. Think of some little child whom you know well: does 
this child seem to you to be naturally religious? Present 
evidences on both sides of the question, if possible. 

2. Do you know young people whose religious life has 
seemed to unfold gradually from early childhood on? 
Give examples. What influences came into these lives to 
nurture their early religious impulses? 

3. Can you give instances where boys or girls became 
irreligious and perhaps immoral before they were grown? 
How do you account for such cases? 

III. MEMORY SELECTION 

"Not in entire forgetfulness, 

And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come 
From God, who is our home : 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy." 

— William Wordsworth. 

IV. REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

In the Library 

1. The child and theology: Education in Religion and Morals, Coe, 

Chap. IV. 

2. The child and the church: The Child as God's Child, Rishell, Chap. 

VII. 

3. The original nature of the child: How to Teach, Strayer and Xors- 

worthy, Chap. II. 



CHAPTER III 

THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AND ITS PUPILS 
I. LESSON STATEMENT 

When little Paul was taken by his father to be enrolled as a new 
pupil in Doctor Blimber's school, the Doctor began, "Mr. Dombey, 
you would wish my little friend to acquire ." Without wait- 
ing for the sentence to be completed Mr. Dombey answered, "Every- 
thing, if you please, Doctor." The answer did not in the least dis- 
turb Doctor Blimber. He replied, as you may remember : "Yes, 
yes, exactly! Ha! We shall impart a great variety of information 
to our little friend and bring him quickly forward, I dare say." 

Fortunately for the children, such schools as Doctor Blimber's 
are more rare in our day than at the time of which Dickens wrote, 
although there are still far too many parents and teachers who have 
about as little understanding of schools and children as had Mr. 
Dombey and Doctor Blimber. It will certainly be agreed that no 
father or mother who enrolls a child in Sunday school may reason- 
ably expect that the school will do everything for him in a religious 
way that he needs to have done. We are all conscious that the Sun- 
day school has its limitations and, besides, that it is but one of sev- 
eral agencies that have to do more or less directly with the making 
of Christian character. But what may reasonably be expected of 
the Sunday school? Are we prepared to answer this question in 
clear and definite terms? 

It is important that in the beginning of our study we have some- 
thing more than a general idea of the aim of the Sunday school. 
We will be prepared to master the principles of successful Sunday- 
school work only if we have a right conception and a definite con- 
ception of what the Sunday school should aim to do for the pupil. 

Our first study established the fact that in all our work the pupil 
is central, his interests first. We saw also that the purpose of the 
Sunday school centers in the lives of its pupils ; that its supreme aim 
is their development and training in Christian character and service. 
Our second study showed that the nature of the child is such that 
we may undertake our task with confidence. The questions that 

24 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AND ITS PUPILS 25 

naturally follow are these : What is involved in the development and 
training of our pupils in Christian character and service? How is 
it to be accomplished? 

In answering these questions we will continue to be guided by the 
nature of the pupil. Both in the analysis of the process and in the 
choice of means and methods the pupil himself, not some interest 
foreign to him, will dictate. Here again we say, "The needs of 
the pupil are the law of the school." The question that now presents 
itself may therefore be stated : What are the needs of our pupils 
that the Sunday school is called upon to meet in developing and 
training them in Christian character and service? In here answer- 
ing the question in a general statement we anticipate in broad outline 
what will come to us in much greater detail as a result of our study 
of the pupil in the successive periods of his developing life. We 
here view the problem of our work in large, bold terms; later we 
proceed to study it in detail. 

1. THE NEEDS OF THE PUPILS 

i. Environment (right surroundings). — Every child we see is 
unconsciously saying to us, "I am a part of all I have met." The 
child's nature is such that he constantly absorbs from his environ- 
ment. Whitman has stated this poetically in his lines : 

"There was a child went forth every day, 
And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder — 

pity, love or dread — 
That object he became. 
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part 

of the day, or for 
Many years, or stretching cycles of years. 
The early lilacs became part of this child, 
And grass, and white and red morning glories, and white and red 

clover; and the song of the phoebe bird . . . 
And the water-plants, with their graceful flat heads— all became part 

of him." 

The child's surroundings affect his moral and religious nature. 
The first approach of religion to his mind is not through lessons, 
but through his environment, from which he unconsciously absorbs 
for future weal or woe. Throughout the whole of childhood and 
youth his religious education is not merely a matter of formal in- 
struction given by teachers. Everything with which he comes into 
contact affects him; first of all, the moral atmosphere with which 
he is surrounded in his home, his school, and his community; next, 
his companions, his chance associates ; the papers, other periodicals. 



26 THE PUPIL 

and books he reads; the pictures and picture shows he sees— all 
these are his teachers. A first responsibility of the church and Sun- 
day school, therefore, is that of making the surroundings and asso- 
ciations of children and young people as nearly ideal as possible 
from the moral and religious standpoint. The home must be reached, 
and the sympathy and co-operation of parents enlisted. The »im- 
portance of a religious home influence and of right example must 
be impressed upon parents. Church and school must undertake a 
ministry to the community, building up in it helpful moral and 
social influences and institutions and overcoming those that are evil. 
Last but not least, the Sunday school itself — the building, its equip- 
ment and furnishings ; the program and conduct of its services ; the 
personality of its officers and teachers ; and the whole spirit and 
atmosphere of the school — must be of such a character as will make 
a religious impression. 

It is the teacher's privilege to become the intimate comrade and 
friend of the pupil. As we have seen, the child's nature is such that 
it is certain to become a battleground. At the best life is a moral 
struggle. Evil influences from without and ungoverned impulses 
from within force an early beginning of the conflict. Imitation 
makes the power of example strong. Loving encouragement and 
sympathy growing out of an understanding of the pupil's personal 
problems, an understanding that can be built up only on the basis 
of an intimate friendship, will be more effective in the formation 
of right character than any amount of formal instruction. There 
is nothing in life more influential than the example and counsels 
of a trusted friend. A supreme need of every boy and girl is for 
comradeship with some man or woman of strong, rich, beautiful 
Christian character, who, next to the parents, ,may be counselor, 
comrade, and friend. The supreme spiritual need of the pupil de- 
fines the supreme obligation of the Sunday-school teacher. 

2. Instruction. — The questions of a child ! Who has not been 
amused, astonished, and perplexed by them? Any healthy-rninded 
child can ask questions that no wise man can answer : "Where does 
God live?" "What does God look like?" "Is God a man?" "What 
does God do?" "Did God make me?" "Did God make you too, 
father?" "Who made God?" These and innumerable other ques- 
tions are expressions of the natural outreach of the child mind for 
information and instruction. The child needs religious answers to 
his many questions. 

Not all the pupil's needs find expression in the form of questions. 
The child has other needs that study of his nature will reveal, and, 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AND ITS PUPILS 27 

as he grows and his life expands, these needs change and multiply. 
These needs are broadly stated in the words used in expressing the 
purpose of the International Graded Lessons, namely, (1) to know 
God as he has revealed himself to us in his Word, in nature, in the 
heart of man, and in Christ; (2) to exercise toward God the Father 
and his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, trust, obedience, 
and worship; (3) to know and do our duty to others; (4) to know 
and do our duty to ourselves. 

3. Nurture of the Feelings. — Pestalozzi, the great pioneer who, 
with Froebel, gave us the kindergarten and laid the foundation of 
our modern elementary education, was wont to declare that "the 
forces of the heart are in the formation of immortal man what the 
root is to the tree." By the "forces of the heart" he meant those 
feelings, such as reverence, love, gratitude, and trust, that are most 
often directed to religious ends. This statement, to which there 
are few who take exception, well expresses the intimate relation of 
the feelings to the religious life. 

The feelings are fundamental in religion. A religious life that 
exhausts itself in emotional expression is of course sadly deficient, 
but a religious life utterly devoid of feeling is unthinkable. Again, 
while we cannot single out any particular feelings of which we may 
say that they are religious feelings and nothing else, there are 
certain feelings that are of especial significance in the nurture and 
development of the religious life. We have mentioned reverence, 
trust, and love. What others should be named? Some that cannot 
be omitted are cheerfulness, joy, and hope; courage, gratitude, good 
will, and penitence. 

Feeling is a character dynamic. To do the right one must know 
the right, but for power purposefully to persevere in right conduct 
when doing the right costs something one must look beyond knowl- 
edge to feeling and will. What we desire we seek; what we love 
we strive for against whatever odds may offer. 

The first and last law of the feelings is that they are nurtured only 
by indirect means. There can be no direct cultivation of feeling. 
We may request or command action of our pupils, but we cannot 
command feeling. It is useless to talk with them about the feelings 
they ought to have, expecting that they can produce them at will. 
Feelings are produced indirectly in response to ideas and action. 
Suggest the appropriate idea to the pupil, bring about the accompany- 
ing action, and one may be sure that feeling will be aroused. It is 
to be recognized also that feeling is contagious. Nowhere is example 
more potent than in the realm of the feelings. 



28 THE PUPIL 

4. Training of the Will. — A high-school junior announced at the 
dinner table that a classmate, a neighbor's boy, had been expelled 
from school. A question concerning the cause led to a recital of a 
long series of misdemeanors from refusal to obey a simple command 
of a teacher to a disgraceful escapade ending in a drunken brawl. 
"What is the matter with the boy? Is he just naturally bad?" was 
the next question. "No," replied the junior, "he is not a bad boy. 
He seems to want to do right, but he has fallen into bad company 
and he is so weak-willed that he cannot resist doing anything that 
they suggest." The explanation was entirely reasonable. Henry 
van Dyke characterized "Sentimental Tommy," of Barrie's well- 
known story, as "the man who never became a person" because he 
really had no will of his own. The will is at the center of strong 
Christian character. Without a will disciplined and trained we can- 
not have strength of character or power of personality. 

At the beginning of life the infant is the helpless creature of 
impulse and desire. He acts upon his impulses with no thought of 
results. The difference between an instinctive act and a willed act 
is that the latter, the voluntary act, is done in order to accom- 
plish a conscious purpose or end. As the mind grows, instinctive 
acts give place to voluntary acts. As the sense of ought develops, 
reasons why he should or should not do a thing become influential 
in determining conduct. Exertion of will characterizes all voluntary 
action. Exertion of will in obedience to moral motives is the mark 
of moral character. It is our work as teachers so to train our 
pupils that moral motives shall more and more become the basis 
of their actions, that they shall habitually hold in check and subdue 
their impulses and desires that lead to evil, and constantly exercise 
their powers of choice in behalf of the right. We cannot do this 
merely by exhortation or classroom instruction. The building up 
of a moral will involves actual practice in right action. The will 
grows strong through exercise. 

2. THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROGRAM 

We have defined broadly the needs of our pupils. What are the 
essential elements in a Sunday-school program that will meet these 
needs? 

1. Everyday, Community Program. — Such a program must re- 
late itself to the whole life of the pupil, his everyday life as well as 
his Sunday life; it must concern itself with the home, the com- 
munity, the playground, and the pupil's associations — not merely 
with the Sunday session of the school. 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AND ITS PUPILS 29 

Back of the program, and more important than any part of it, is 
the necessity for teachers of rich, strong personality who are willing 
to be friends and comrades of their pupils. 

2. Instruction. — Doctor Blimber may well stand as the repre- 
sentative of a numerous class of people who believed and believe — 
for some of them still survive — that the whole purpose of education 
is to impart to the child mind a readymade body of knowledge. 
Dickens records that the Doctor seemed to survey Paul with the 
same sort of interest that he might attach to some choice little animal 
he was going to stuff. Blimber has his counterpart in those ministers 
and Sunday-school teachers who seem to think that if they could by 
some means transfer entire the contents of the Bible and the cate- 
chism to the boy's mind his religious education would be complete. 
At the other extreme are those who hold with the parents of Una 
Mary that no religious instruction whatsoever should be given a 
child. The little girl's parents seemed to think that her mind would 
remain a blank on all religious subjects until she was old enough 
to choose wisely for herself what religious ideas she should receive 
and cherish. Those who have read Una Hunt's remarkable auto- 
biography will recall that, her religious questionings being denied 
by parents and proper religious teachers, Una Mary turned to the 
colored servant, the hired man, and chance acquaintances of street 
and school for answers to the insistent interrogations of her eager 
mind. 

No readymade body of knowledge, even though it be religious 
knowledge, can be effective in accomplishing the religious educa- 
tion of the pupil. A pupil might memorize the entire catechism 
perfectly and a large part of the Bible in addition, yet not be a 
Christian. On the other hand, it is clearly evident that it is a well- 
nigh fatal omission to neglect the religious instruction of the child. 
Between the two extremes represented in the examples mentioned 
there is a happy medium. This is found in a sincere effort to provide 
materials that meet the pupil's needs in each period of his develop- 
ing life. Such materials we believe to be offered in the Interna- 
tional Graded Lessons. 

3. Worship. — If it is properly planned, we may confidently rely 
upon the service of worship as an effective means for the nurture 
of the religious feelings. We are not to think of worship, however, 
as related solely to the feelings. It is equally a means of inspiring 
and empowering the will. The great central purpose of Jesus was 
to do the will of the Father. As with Jesus so with his followers ; 
the Christian character is one that finds its central purpose in the 



30 THE PUPIL 

will of God. In sincere worship the will of the individual seeks to 
know and to become identified with the divine will. Furthermore, 
in worship we come to realize the presence and the ideal comrade- 
ship of the Great Companion. 

It is not difficult to lead a child to worship. The very little child, 
who is loving and trustful and in his own way reverent, and in whom 
the sense of dependence is marked, is by nature a worshiper; and 
through worship his religious feelings may be deepened, strength- 
ened, and made permanent. In developing the instinct of worship 
it is necessary that the pupil shall be made acquainted with the 
appropriate forms and language in which to express his worship. 
The language must of course be simple, suited to the child's under- 
standing, and expressive of a child's spiritual needs; for it is not 
to be expected that the hopes, longings, and aspirations of the 
adult can be shared by the child. Instruction and training in wor- 
ship may properly be very closely related. Materials used in the 
teaching process, if they have been properly selected, may be im- 
mediately utilized as mediums of expression of the religious feelings. 
Thus, Scripture and hymns used for instruction, in part memorized, 
lend themselves to use as means of expression in worship. As the 
pupil progresses through the successive grades of the Sunday school, 
care should be taken to see that means of expression corresponding 
to his period of development are provided. It is quite as necessary 
that hymns, responses, and the language of prayer shall be graded 
as that graded lessons shall be furnished. 

4. Training in Christian Conduct and Service. — It has been said 
that the education of any individual is to be measured by the differ- 
ence it makes in his behavior — that is, in his character as shown 
by his conduct. This is a test that we ought certainly to be willing 
to make in religious education. No religious teaching is effective 
that does not modify conduct. It is necessary that the ideas and 
ideals of our teaching shall find habitual expression in everyday 
life. No matter how clearly the pupil may understand the abstract 
statement of truth, he makes it a part of himself only by putting 
it into action. What is true of instruction is also true of feeling. 
Whenever strong feeling is present, the natural impulse is for it 
to find some means of motor expression. Failing in this, it simply 
evaporates and thus loses its power strongly to influence conduct at 
any future time. 

One may thus readily see that little real teaching results if the 
teacher confines his effort to a thirty-minute lesson session once a 
week. The pupil's life is a life of action, and the teacher must find 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AND ITS PUPILS 31 

things for him to do which express his religious ideas and feelings. 
This cannot be left merely to chance. To provide ample oppor- 
tunity for expression and for practice in right action there should 
be a program of training in service. Such a program should provide 
a wide range of possible activities suited to pupils of the various 
grades and including varied forms of Christian service. Acts of 
service suggested in the program, as far as possible, should be 
planned so as to be the natural outgrowth of the lessons taught in 
the various grades. 

3. THE THREEFOLD LIFE 

In thus meeting the religious needs of the pupil we are acquainting 
him with God. It may help us to see this clearly if we think of a 
threefold approach of God to the soul — by the way of the intellect, 
by the way of the feelings, and by the way of the will. Misunder- 
standing and confusion have sometimes been wrought by identify- 
ing religion too exclusively with a single form of expression — most 
often, perhaps, with feeling; sometimes with thinking, or with will- 
ing and doing. The religious life is more than any one of these. 

In my discussion of the pupil's needs I have spoken of three 
forms of the mind's action. I have done this in the interest of sim- 
plicity of statement and of clearness of thought. Of course, it is 
not 'to be understood that the human personality is split into three 
separate or distinct parts. The mind is one, not three. "The whole 
mind thinks in thought, feels in feeling, and wills in action." We 
cannot really affect the intellect without at the same time causing 
a response in feeling and awakening a tendency toward an act of 
will. 

Similarly, we are to understand that the basis of religion is not 
to be sought in any isolated part of the pupil's nature. There is 
no separately marked-off religious section of the child's being. Reli- 
gion has to do with the pupil's complete nature, as a thinking, feel- 
ing, willing and acting being. If the whole child is nurtured ; 
if worship, instruction, and service are continued through the years, 
the result will be a growing consciousness of God and an ever deep- 
ening religious experience. These means efficiently used will awaken 
the response of the whole soul. With intellect, feeling, and will 
enlisted in seeking after God, we may be perfectly sure that there 
will be an increasing apprehension of the truth of God, an ever 
deeper realization of fellowship with God, and an ever more per- 
fect doing of the will of God. The unfailing promise of God is 
that they who seek him with the whole soul shall find him. 



32 THE PUPIL 

II. CONSTRUCTIVE TASK 

i. Think back into your own childhood: As you remem- 
ber your situation what were your chief religious needs? 
(Write your statement in answer to this question before 
reading the "Lesson Statement. ,, After studying the "Les- 
son Statement" you may wish to supplement what was pre- 
viously written.) 

2. Think of some boy or girl whom you know well. 
Write a brief statement on the religious needs of this child 
in the light of the discussion in this chapter. 

3. Thinking of the Sunday school with which you are 
best acquainted : 

a. Does the Sunday school in its plan or program of 
work make provision for instruction, worship, and expres- 
sion in service ? 

b. Does it have a printed or otherwise well- formulated 
program of instruction? 

c. Is the service of worship carefully planned? Is it 
carried out in a worshipful spirit? 

d. Is there a well-planned program of service? To what 
extent are the pupils of the different grades actually en- 
listed in various forms of Christian service? 

III. MEMORY ASSIGNMENT 

Thou Healer, Teacher, Comforter divine ! 

I could not love thee with such tender love 

Hadst thou not friendship for the children shown. 

O Jesus, this thy title would I bear — 

The sweetest, dearest name e'er given thee — 

As Friend of children would I too be known ! 

— Anonymous. 

Purpose of the International Graded Lessons — To meet 
the spiritual needs of the pupil in each stage of his develop- 
ment. The spiritual needs broadly stated are these: 

1. To know God as he has revealed himself to us in his 
Word, in nature, in the heart of man, and in Christ. 

2. To exercise toward God, the Father, and his Son 
Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, trust, obedience, and 
worship. 

3. To know and do our duty to others. 

4. To know and do our duty to ourselves. 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AND ITS PUPILS 33 
IV. REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

In the Library 

i. The purpose of the Sunday school: Principles and Ideals for the Sun- 
day School, Burton and Mathews, Chap. I. 

2. Faulty conceptions of the Sunday school. Efficiency in the Sunday 

School, Cope, Chap. II. 

3. Attaining the religious purpose: Efficiency in the Sunday School, 

Cope, Chap. XI. 



CHAPTER IV 

GROWTH 

I. LESSON STATEMENT 

A temporary change of residence made it necessary for a primary 
superintendent to leave her department. She was devotedly attached 
to her pupils, and the parting was not an easy one. One by one 
she bade them a loving farewell, squeezing each chubby hand and 
planting a tender kiss on the rosy cheek of each little girl. What 
joy she had had in being their friend and leader! How could she 
bear to leave them? The pain of parting was tempered by the 
thought that she would be away only three years ; on her return she 
would again see them; they would still be her boys and girls. 

To the teacher the three years passed very quickly, and she was 
back again in her old home. She could hardly wait for Sunday to 
come, so anxious was she to see her pupils. Even now, as she 
. thought of them, they came trooping into her mind, every childish 
face as distinct in her recollection as though she had seen them 
yesterday. Of course, she reflected, most of them would now be 
Juniors, but they would still be her own dear children. On Sunday 
morning, when she stood before them, it was impossible for her 
to conceal her surprise : "Why, Wilson, how you have grown !" 
"And, Mary, how you have changed!" "And who is this? Can it 
be Blanche? No — yes, it is. Why, I would not have known you." 
"And is this James? You do not look the same boy." And so it 
went until all had been greeted or inquired after. There was happi- 
ness in the meeting. The boys and girls greeted her joyfully — 
some hilariously, others a bit reserved — but when the session was 
over, and she was again in her own room sitting before an open 
fire in meditation, she said almost sadly to herself : "They are not 
the same children I left three years ago. They are fine boys and 
girls, and I am glad to see them, but they will never seem just 
the same to me again." 

What had happened? Just that which is always happening in the 
lives of children and young people. Three years of growth had 

34 



GROWTH 35 

taken place, and it had made great changes in every one of these 
boys and girls. 

The child grows. There is no fact more important for us to 
realize concerning our pupils than this — they are growing beings. 
If the child is normal, from the day of his birth until full maturity 
has been attained he is under the constant influence of growth and 
is being changed by it. 

Children grow because they are alive. That mysterious something 
which we call life manifests itself by growth. Haslett well says, 
"A careful study of growth will teach us more about life than any 
other subject of research." 

Grozvth takes place only where there is life. It is sometimes care- 
lessly remarked that the walls of a house under construction are 
growing in size. This is a misuse of the word. No mechanical 
process may be properly spoken of as growth. The child has a 
living, growing personality. If we are to help him, we must relate 
ourselves to his process of growth. We sometimes hear the teacher's 
work likened to molding the clay, hewing the block, or building the 
temple. These are dull and inadequate figures when applied to the 
work of the teacher. It is much more apt and meaningful to com- 
pare his work to that of the gardener. Let us think of the Sunday 
school as a beautiful garden and the teachers as the gardeners who, 
with loving, skillful care and attention, strive to bring every plant 
to perfection of flower and fruitage in its time. 

i. THE PROCESS OF GROWTH 

It will help us to understand our task if we may consider some 
of the characteristics of growth as a process. 

i. According to Law. — Growth is orderly. It is not arbitrary or 
a matter of chance. Nothing merely happens to grow in a certain 
way. Life has its laws of growth. Growth proceeds according to 
these lazvs. The laws of growth may be known. Any worth-while 
teacher-training course aims to lead to an understanding of the 
laws of growth, that the teacher may work in accord with them 
and not contrary to them. We all realize that children are often 
injured through neglect. Do we also realize that children may be 
injured by unreasonable demands made upon them? The chapters 
of this book that follow aim to give a description of how Christian 
character grows, that we may help and not hinder its growth. 

2. An Unfolding from Within. — Growth proceeds from zvithin 
outward. It is an inner response to stimulation from without. If 
it were not for the inner capacity for growth, no amount of outer 



36 THE PUPIL 

stimulation would avail anything. The primary basis and hope of 
development, therefore, is not in any exterior cause,, but in the 
hidden potencies within. Growth may be aided. We may aid it by 
providing favorable exterior conditions and by supplying the neces- 
sary stimuli, including the kind of food that can be appropriated 
within. 

3. Continuous, but Marked by Crises. — Thinking of the entire 
course traversed by the living being from its origin to maturity, 
growth may be said to be a continuous process. The rate of growth 
in different periods varies to a marked extent. At times it may be 
very rapid, at other times so slow as to be imperceptible. The 
physical growth of the child is most rapid during the earliest years 
and in general may be said to decrease as the years pass. It is not 
uniform in different parts of the body at any one time. Growth is 
subject to interruptions. It may be retarded by unfavorable condi- 
tions. Under very unfavorable conditions it may entirely cease. 
Grozvth is also marked by crises. These are times of marked 
change, or of sudden maturing of new powers, or of the bursting 
forth of new, previously latent possibilities. Always the crises of 
growth are important. Neglect or lack of needed nourishment at 
these times cannot possibly be atoned for later. 

4. Accompanied by Development. — Growth and development are 
not the same. Considered in physical terms, growth is simply in- 
crease in size, while development involves an interior change, a 
change in the very nature of the tissues. Growth is the natural 
result of the appropriation of food by the body; development results 
from food plus exercise. Growth is quantitative ; development is 
qualitative. Children are not merely smaller than men and women ; 
they are different because their powers are undeveloped. The in- 
fant possesses in germ all that is possessed by a mature man. As 
physical growth proceeds, it is the task of education (using the word 
in its broadest meaning) to develop all the latent capacities and 
powers until the erstwhile infant stands forth a complete, perfect 
man. 

2. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

Our pupils grow and develop. What is the significance of this 
to us as Sunday-school teachers? 

1. Growth Makes Education Possible. — Without growth there 
could be no education. All possible educational effort would be en- 
tirely wasted if it were not for the capacity and tendency of living 
beings to grow. As growth is far more rapid in the early years 



GROWTH 37 

of life, education has then its largest opportunity. In the beginnings 
of growth there is always a high degree of flexibility and plasticity. 
Adjustment is easy. Direction may readily be imparted. 

2. Growth Guarantees Result in Education. — Growth and de- 
velopment are natural and normal where there is life. Education 
assists development, but the tendency to groiv and to develop 
guarantees that education will not be without result. The teacher 
labors with certain hope because he does not labor alone. His is 
a work of cooperation. Nature underwrites his every effort. 

3. Growth Is More Than a Physical Process. — Physical growth 
is most in evidence, but growth is not peculiar to the physical nature. 
As the body grows the mind develops. As our pupils increase in 
stature it is the normal thing for them also to develop in wisdom 
and in grace. It is our privilege and responsibility to aid them to 
develop morally and religiously as they grow in physical size and 
strength. 

The concept of groivth applied to man as a religious being is the 
most significant and fruitful mental possession possible for religious 
work. Not that it is a new conception, for it is not. It comes to 
us from the Scriptures, but it has not had the place in religious 
thought and practice in modern times that it should have had. Luke 
says of Jesus, "And the child grew, and waxed strong, filled with 
wisdom; and the grace of God was upon him. . . . And Jesus ad- 
vanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men" 
(2. 40, 52). Writing of the purpose of Christ, Paul declares it to 
be a part of the divine purpose that we "may grow up in all things 
into him, who is the head, even Christ" (Eph. 4. 15). Peter ex- 
horts us to "long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that 
ye may grow thereby unto salvation" (1 Pet. 2. 2), and again, 
"Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ" (2 Pet. 3. 18). 

3. FACTORS THAT CONDITION GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

While growth is ever the normal manifestation of life, it cannot 
continue as it should unless right conditions exist. What are the 
factors affecting growth and development? There are three of chief 
importance : 

1. Heredity. — Every living being is a member of an endless pro- 
cession from the past. No child ever starts out in life unrelated to 
the past. Heredity may be said to represent the net total of all the 
influences of the past upon the individual. That it is a factor that 
must be reckoned with in all education cannot be disputed. In a 



38 THE PUPIL 

measure it determines the power of all the other factors that con- 
dition growth ; in many ways it limits them. It is never wholly to 
the advantage or the disadvantage of an individual. The child to 
whom heredity brings disability of one sort may be advantaged in 
another particular by an inheritance of rare value. The teacher 
has naught to do with heredity except to utilize it as a means of 
coming to a fuller understanding of the particular pupils with whom 
he is called upon to deal. 

2. Environment. — In the preceding chapter we discussed environ- 
ment briefly under the term "right surroundings." By environment 
are meant all the influences with which the pupil is brought into con- 
tact. We speak of physical environment, meaning all conditions 
of place, such as the house in which one lives, the neighborhood, 
even the climate. Moral environment means all the influences affect- 
ing the moral and religious life. Physicians have so emphasized 
the importance of right physical environment as affecting the growth 
of the body that its importance is generally realized. But do we 
equally realize that everything the child sees, hears, and feels affects 
his moral and spiritual growth? We also speak of the environment 
of persons, meaning all the people with whom one is surrounded. 
Personal association especially is important in its effect upon moral 
and religious growth. Character and personality are nourished in 
unconscious ways by association with other strong, rich personalities. 
If the associations of our pupils are not what they ought to be, 
much of the effect of other influences is certain to be lost. 

3. Nurture. — Every living thing requires food and can grow only 
as food is supplied and assimilated. A principal means of assisting 
growth, therefore, is by supplying food. Not alone the body, but 
the whole nature of the pupil is hungry and demands food. Growth 
requires, as we have seen, right external conditions and various 
forms of external stimuli. For example, the plant requires light 
and air in order to grow. By the nurture of life we mean the 
process of aiding growth and development by providing right con- 
ditions, the necessary stimuli, and proper nourishment. 

The nurture of the physical life is a distinct study in itself. With 
physical nurture we are not primarily concerned in this course. The 
responsibility of the religious teacher is chiefly for the nurture of 
the moral and religious life. 

4. THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AND NURTURE 

It is evident that practically the whole of the teacher's work, as 
we have defined it in preceding chapters, may be included under the 



GROWTH 39 

term "nurture." Throughout this book the word will be used in 
the broad, general sense of including all that a wise, devoted, skill- 
ful teacher can do in aiding the development of Christian character 
in the pupil. Concerning religious nurture there are certain general 
statements to be made : 

^. The Need of the Pupil the Law of Nurture. — Here again we 
apply the principle emphasized in our first chapter. The primacy of 
the pupil applied to the teacher's task of nurture means that the 
nature of the pupil determines the materials and methods of nurture. 
Just as the successful gardener well understands that the nature of 
the plant determines the soil and the methods of culture required 
for the most fruitful growth, so the religious teacher should realize 
that the nature and needs of the pupil, and not his own fancies or 
any exterior consideration, must be determinative if there is to be 
real religious nurture. 1 

2. Nurture as Cooperation. — Nurture is a form of cooperation. 
One of the most prominent characteristics of life is its tendency to 
react to stimuli. The living organism is sensitive, receptive, re- 
sponsive. It reaches out, appropriates, assimilates, and thus grows. 
Without this power which life possesses growth would be impcfs- 
sible. Growth takes place only as the living organism appropriates, 
makes use of, that which is brought to it. We cannot cause any 
living thing to grow. We may only cooperate with the inner, crea- 
tive principle that in itself is the direct cause of growth. This is 
true in our work of stimulating the spiritual life and aiding the 
development of Christian character. We cannot cause the soul to 
grow. We may cooperate with the inner principle of life and with 
the spirit of God, but more than this we cannot do. 

5. THE PERIODS OF GROWTH 

In the course of his developing life the pupil passes through a 
number of more or less clearly marked periods of physical and 
mental growth. 

i. Periods of Growth and Corresponding Departments. — In 
the fully organized Sunday school there is a department to corre- 
spond with each period of growth. It is of course recognized that 
mental development does not exactly parallel physical growth, and 
that religious development does not parallel either physical growth 
or mental development. A pupil of thirteen, in an exceptional case, 
may not be mentally in advance of other pupils of nine or ten 



1 C/ r . Life in the Making, Barclay, Brown, et al., pp. nff. 



4 o THE PUPIL 

years. A pupil of twelve, in an exceptional case, may be as mature 
in moral character as other pupils of fifteen. The ideal grouping in 
the Sunday school, it would probably be agreed, would be upon the 
basis of moral and religious development. But this is difficult to 
gauge. What are the tests? How shall we measure religious de- 
velopment? Because of this difficulty in grouping pupils we fall 
back upon physical development, as indicated by calendar age, and 
upon mental development, as indicated by public-school grades. The 
age periods, with the administrative groups corresponding approxi- 
mately to them, are : 
' a. Infancy ; — from one to two years. The Cradle Roll. 

b. Childhood — from three to twelve years. This period is again 
divided into (i) early childhood; (2) middle childhood; and (3) 
later childhood. To these subdivisions correspond the three ele- 
mentary departments of the Sunday school; namely, Beginners' 
(three to five years), Primary (six to eight years), and Junior (nine 
to eleven or twelve years). 

c. Youth, or adolescence — from thirteen to about twenty-five years. 
Adolescence may be divided into (1) early adolescence; (2) middle 
adolescence; and (3) later adolescence. To these subdivisions cor- 
respond the secondary departments of the Sunday school; namely, 
Intermediate (twelve or thirteen to fourteen), Senior (fifteen to 
seventeen), and Young People's (eighteen to twenty-four). 

d. Adult life — from about twenty-five years on. Adult life, again, 
has more or less clearly defined divisions, but the Sunday school 
does not take account of them in its departmental groupings. 

2. Periods not Sharply Defined. — Though the periods we have 
named are distinct, they are not sharply divided. Each merges into 
the next following. We may not mark any one day as that when 
the baby ceases to be an infant or when the boy crosses the thresh- 
old of youth. The changes that take place are gradual, and in 
some cases their progress may not be clearly indicated. 

3. Individual Differences. — All plans of grouping should permit 
exceptions to be made on account of individual differences. While 
the periods we have named are common to all, and their limits 
approximately the same, individuality must not be overlooked. Every 
child has his own personality, his own peculiar individual charac- 
teristics, in some of which he marks an exception to some general 
rule. In studying children we should look for exceptions as well as 
for conformity. 



GROWTH 41 



II. CONSTRUCTIVE TASK 

1. Think of some boy or girl with whom you have been 
at some time in your life well acquainted and whom you 
did not see during an interval of three or four years. Write 
a brief statement on some of the changes that took place 
during this interval. 

2. Think in retrospect of your own religious life. Be- 
ginning with your earliest recollections, write briefly your 
religious autobiography in terms of growth. 

3. Considering the Sunday school with which you are 
best acquainted, make a complete list of its classes, indi- 
cating in the case of each in what department it should be 
classified. 

III. MEMORY ASSIGNMENT 

"Flower from root, 
And spiritual from natural, grade by grade, 
In all our life." 

— Mrs. Browning. 



"One knew the joy the sculptor knows 

When, plastic to his lightest touch, 

His clay-wrought model slowly grows 

To that fine grace desired so much. 

"So daily grew before her eyes 

The living shapes whereon she wrought, 
Strong, tender, innocently wise, 
The child's heart with a woman's thought." 

J. G. Whittier. 

IV. REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

I. In "The Worker and Work" Series 

1. The fact and significance of growth: Beginners' Worker and Work, 
Chap. I. Senior Worker and Work, Chap. I. 
II. In the Library 

1. Physical growth and development: Fundamentals of Child Study, Kirk- 

patrick, Chap. II. 

2. Education as development of living beings: Education in Religion and 

Morals, Coe, Chap. VII. 

3. The growth process of human life: Moral Education, Griggs, Chap. 

'4. Some principles of development: The Unfolding Life, Lamoreaux, 
Chap. I. 



CHAPTER V 

ACTIVITY 

I. LESSON STATEMENT 

The child is active. Always and everywhere he is doing some- 
thing. It is useless to bid him "Be still." As well ask gravitation 
to cease its pull or the sun to cease to shine. He cannot be still. 
It is said of the boy that he has within him a thousand springs 
with which to wiggle and not one with which to keep still. No 
one who has had to do with children needs argument in proof of 
the assertion that they are active. But there are questions concern- 
ing activity that demand consideration. Why are children active? 
What is the significance of activity? What should be the attitude 
of the teacher toward activity? How may the pupil's activity be 
utilized by the Sunday-school teacher? 

i. WHY OUR PUPILS ARE ACTIVE 

In body and mind the human being is organized for activity. "The 
most original thing in us is the impulse to action." We have it 
before we have a consciousness of the world about us. 

i. The Body is Organized for Action. — Watch a baby on the 
nursery floor. He reaches for everything that comes near, turns 
toward every sound he hears, tries to raise everything he touches 
to his mouth. It is evident that every sensation of sight, of sound, 
and of touch is a stimulus to action. In fact, the whole nervous 
system of the human being is a highly organized mechanism for 
translating sensations into movements. It seems to have been con- 
structed for the purpose of receiving impressions from the outside 
world and responding to them in innumerable forms of action. As 
well expect the telegraph sounder to be silent when the current 
comes over the wires as to expect the child to be still when the 
impressions come in over the nerves from eye and ear and finger 
tips. The law of action is wrought into the very fib£r o.f his 
physical being. 

2. The Mind is Organized for Action. — What is true of the 
body in this respect is almost equally true of the mind. Psychology 
teaches us that "all consciousness is motor." 

42 



ACTIVITY 43 

Every idea is an impulse to action. "Every idea tends to 
pass into action and would do so if it were not hindered by the 
presence of other ideas ; exclusive attention to an idea is quite 
certain, therefore, to bring about the corresponding action, as it 
were, of itself. . . . Only hold the end steadily before you and you 
will do it" 1 Feeling likewise tends to action. Thought and will are 
prompted by feeling. No feeling is content to exist in and for it- 
self. To say that thought and feeling tend to action is only half 
the fact; they are, as we shall see, interdependent. Both idea and 
feeling are influenced by and, in a measure at least, grow out of 
action. 

2. THE DETERMINATION OF ACTION 

When we begin to analyze the pupil's activity we find that it is 
a series of particular actions. To understand how we may utilize 
this fundamental element in the pupil's life in our work of religious 
education it is desirable to know what determines how the pupil 
will act in a particular situation. Any particular act may be said 
to be the result of instinct, habit, and will, each entering into it 
as an influential factor. 

i. Instinct. — The child comes into existence with clearly defined 
tendencies toward certain kinds of action wrought into its very 
being. These natural tendencies we call instinctive. They are the 
result in part of the accumulated experience of the race; they are 
colored by the habits and character of immediate ancestors ; and, 
finally, they represent variations in individual endowment. An ac- 
tion is wholly instinctive if the child does not require to learn it; 
of this the most familiar example is the sucking of newborn babies. 
An action is partly instinctive if the child does not need to acquire 
the tendency to do it; for example, boys climbing trees. The child 
comes into life possessed of many instincts, some of which do not 
manifest themselves until later adolescence. To make a list of the 
instincts or to classify them is a difficult matter, one upon which 
no agreement has been reached by psychologists. 

2. Habit. — Habits are acquired as a result of the plastic condition 
of the nervous system. Plastic nerve cells are modified through 
use. Professor James puts it this way : "A nerve cell that has once 
acted is so affected that it more readily acts again in the same way. 
Thus, any connection which has once been made by the transmis- 
sion of a nerve impulse from one cell to another is the more easily 



National Living, King, p. 153. 



44 THE PUPIL 

made a second time, until through repetition a well-worn pathway 
has been established." A particular act performed for the first 
time is the result of instinct and will; every later repetition of the 
same act is influenced by the gradually forming habit. Unfortunately, 
the word "habit" is in ill repute in common thought, as if all 
habits were bad habits. This is far from the truth. Habit is of 
significance for all living. The virtues quite as much as the vices 
are forms of habitual action. Indeed, Professor James has stated 
that "ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety- 
nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, 
from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night." We 
form habits of thinking and feeling. In fact, any connection "nerv- 
ous or mental, between impressions, ideas, thought, memories, feel- 
ings, movements," once made tends to recur. The teacher should 
bear in mind that habits are built up of repeated actions, not of 
preachings, exhortations, or scoldings. There is only one way to 
form a good habit in the pupil — lead him to do the thing once and 
again and again and again. 

3. Will. — The third element in action is will. The will is the 
executive power of the mind. Through its power of will the mind 
commands, directs, and controls action. While every idea is an 
impulse to action, and all feeling tends to action, we may have both 
knowledge and desire without action. The realization of the idea 
and of the feeling in action is the service of the will. If the will 
fails to command, the impulse to action from both idea and feeling 
is lost, and the power of future impulses is weakened. 

While the character of a particular action is certain to be in- 
fluenced by instinct and habit, will is the determining factor, as the 
mind has power of will to inhibit — that is, to negative the N influence 
of instinct and habit combined. More is involved in the will than 
the decision to act or not to act. There are always alternatives of 
action, possibilities of choice. Thereby enters the moral element. 
Thus, it becomes clear that the will has tremendous significance for 
conduct and character. An important part of moral and religious 
education is training the will in right moral choices. 

3. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ACTIVITY 

Why is activity of significance to the religious teacher? The 
answer to this question will become increasingly clear as we con- 
sider the relation of activity to learning, to character, to personality, 
and to Christian discipleship. 

1. Activity and Learning. — We realize of course that food would 



ACTIVITY 45 

be useless to the body were it not for the body's active process of 
assimilation. Similarly, knowledge is utilized only as the mind is 
active toward it. Without activity there is no learning. Through 
self -activity the mind of the pupil appropriates what is brought to 
it. Teaching in the old sense of pouring facts into a passive re- 
ceptacle is impossible. All real teaching awakens the mind into 
activity and evokes reactions. Nor does the pupil first learn a thing 
and then express it in word or deed. The expression is itself a 
part of the process of acquisition. 

2. Activity and Character. — Through self-activity and conduct 
character is achieved. The verb tells the story. Character is 
achieved, not bestowed. Achievement requires action. It is not 
enough that our pupils think true thoughts, have religious senti- 
ments and give mental assent to right purposes. That which is not 
expressed dies. Unless thought, feeling, and purpose work out into 
action, they do not affect character. Character has sometimes been 
defined as what one habitually does. It is commonly held that 
character determines conduct; that what a boy does depends on the 
kind of a boy he is. There is a sense in which this is true; but 
to the parent and teacher the significant thing is that action comes 
first in the child's life ; and that what a child does, that he becomes. 

3. Activity and Personality. — The child is an immature person. 
"Personality comes to self-realization and to maturity through ac- 
tivity/' The whole aim of moral and religious education is to bring 
the individual to a faith and life of his own. 

We have more to do than to train pupils. Horses and dogs can 
be readily trained. We desire free, voluntary moral and religious 
conduct. This is impossible in the lower animals. It is possible in 
the child because he is more than an animal; he is a moral person- 
ality even though immature. We develop the child's moral person- 
ality through encouraging in him freedom of expression in right 
ways, not merely to repeat words or even statements of truth, but to 
express himself in reacting freely to the material presented to him 
in the form of lessons. The method of religious and moral educa- 
tion, says Professor Coe, "can be nothing less than placing the child 
in a series of such concrete situations as shall reveal him to himself 
as really interested in the good and self-enlisted on its side." 1 

4. Activity and Christian Discipleship. — To be a follower of 
Jesus is to live a life of Christian service. Jesus' oft-repeated word 
in changing phrase was, "If any man would be my disciple, let him 



Education in Religion and Morals, p. 135. 



46 THE PUPIL 

do" In how many ways he sought to impress the necessity of 
activity! As disciples we are his "servants," his "fellow-laborers," 
his "coworkers." The world to the Christian is a "field," a "garden," 
a "vineyard," a "marketplace." Every one of these words speaks 
of action. Christ calls us not to passivity, but to activity. 

4. TYPES OF MIND 

In characteristics of their mental life children differ greatly. A 
broad, somewhat rough classification into groups may be made on 
the basis of activity : 

1. The Sensory-Minded Child. — A child of this type is passive, 
inert, quiet, reflective. He is undemonstrative and seems timid. In- 
hibition is excessive, and power to will deficient. He is likely to 
be thought dull, even stupid. The need is for more frequent expres- 
sion. He should be stimulated to act. Kindergarten methods are 
serviceable, since they make movement easy and develop self-con- 
fidence. Constant effort should be made to get the sensory child 
to talk, to act as a leader, to take the active part. 

2. The Motor-Minded Child. — This type of child is impulsive, 
quickly responsive, and over-active. Inhibition with him is deficient ; 
his will is of the hair-trigger type. He needs to be stimulated to 
read, study, and reflect. It is idle to attempt control by commands 
or threats ; the negative command is in itself to him a suggestion 
to action. Make assignments which require care and thought, obser- 
vation and discrimination. 

These two types of mind represent broadly two types of religious 
life and experience — the first a religion of feeling, of introspection; 
the latter a religion of deeds. 

5. THE TEACHER'S PROBLEM 

The pupil's activity is the teacher's problem. It is the root stuff 
from which intelligence, character, personality, and the acceptable 
service of God and man must come. It is the necessary means to 
all that is desirable in our moral effort with the child. The teacher 
must look with sympathy upon the activity of the pupil. It is cer- 
tain to be a source of perplexity; often the teacher will be at his 
wits' end because of some of its manifestations, but he must remem- 
ber that without it all his efforts would be useless. His constant 
problem and his greatest will be hozv to utilize the activity of the 
pupil. Ways and means he must find. The fatal blunder in all 
schools, distressingly common even to-day, is the effort toward 
repression. The one word the teacher must absolutely rule out of 



ACTIVITY 47 

his vocabulary is "don't/' He will succeed just in proportion to 
his ability to eliminate "don't" and to use "do." 

The outstanding weakness of our Sunday-school work in the past 
has been the predominance of exhortation. The lesson of this 
chapter may be summed up in the statement of James : "Don't preach 
too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract. Lie 
in wait rather for the practical opportunities, be prompt to seize 
those as they pass, and thus at one operation get your pupils both 
to think, to feel, and to do. The strokes of behavior are what give 
the new set to the character and work the good habits into its 
organic tissue, [while] preaching and talking too soon become an 
ineffectual bore." 

Thus again we are led to realize the importance of a week-day 
program of activity and service. The work of Sunday, so limited 
in time, will be totally insufficient unless it is supplemented by enter- 
ing into the daily life of the pupil. What the teacher is able to 
get her boys and girls to do on Monday is of greater importance 
than what she leads them to think and say on Sunday. This for the 
reason that the order of precedence in the child's life is, do, feel, 
understand, rather than, as we have seemed to think in the past, the 
reverse. 

We bring the discussion of this chapter to a close with these sig- 
nificant words of Professor Home : "The child is primarily a doer, 
not a thinker; he abides in the region of the concrete, not the 
abstract. Children can do right and so feel rightly before they 
can think rightly. It is through obedience to the commands of God 
and feeling our dependence upon God that children finally come to 
think rightly about God." 

II. CONSTRUCTIVE TASK 

Considering again the Sunday school which you know 
best, write answers to the following questions : 

i. Does the effort seem to be to repress activity or to 
direct it? Give an example of a specific case. 

2. Make a list of some of the habits being formed by 
pupils in the school. 

3. Select some one class and, stating the age of the 
pupils, write a list (a) of some of the habits you would 
try to form in them if you were the teacher; (b) of some 
of the things you would try to get them to do in training 
them in service. 



48 THE PUPIL 



III. MEMORY ASSIGNMENT 

"Four things a man must learn to do 
If he would make his record true : 
To think without confusion clearly ; 
To love his fellow men sincerely; 
To act from honest motives purely; 
To trust in God and heaven securely." 

— Henry van Dyke. 

IV. REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

In the Library 

i. Nurture by exercise: The Natural Way, Du Bois, Chap. VI. 

2. The necessity for action: Personal and Ideal Elements in Education, 

King, pp. 1 19-126. 

3. The instincts: Fundamentals of Child Study, Kirkpatrick, Chap. IV; 

Talks to Teachers, James, Chap. VII. 



CHAPTER VI 
EARLY CHILDHOOD 
I. LESSON STATEMENT 

In the first six years of existence the child passes through two 
periods of his life — infancy and early childhood. Infancy is of 
immense significance both for education and for religion, but un- 
fortunately the prescribed limits of this textbook will not permit 
a study of this first period of the child's life. If the Sunday school 
is fully awake to its opportunities and responsibilities, it will have 
a Cradle Roll with a superintendent who has made a special study 
of infancy, and of how the beginnings of religion may be nurtured 
in these first years. Infancy is already past when at some time 
near his fourth birthday the child is promoted from the Cradle-Roll 
class or, if he has not had the privilege of Cradle-Roll membership, 
taken by father or mother, brother or sister to be enrolled as a 
member of the Beginners' Department. 

The Beginner lives in a world of his ozvn — a world built for him 
by his senses rather than by ideas, yet a world in which both fact 
and fancy have a place. To the child everything in it is intensely 
real. He has not yet learned to make the distinction that adults 
make between the real and unreal. The little child's world is a 
narrow, circumscribed kind of universe so far as knowledge is con- 
cerned, but his imagination enriches it in a score of ways. Consider, 
for example, that the child of this age has almost no idea of time, 
space, or value. Buzzar is four ; the family reside in a big, beautiful 
apartment building ; but to Buzzar and his playmate, Gordon, the 
hundred-thousand dollar building is simply "Buzzar's house." Gor- 
don lives in Chicago, and his grandmother in Los Angeles, yet he 
talks of going to see grandmother as if it were a journey of a few 
blocks. 

The little child's world is a forgotten world to adults, as unreal 
and unknown as the adult's world is strange and unknown to the 
child. This we should realize, and, difficult as the process may be, 
we should retrace our steps and enter again the forgotten realm 

49 



50 THE PUPIL 

of childhood, that we may "live with our children." Only by doing 
so can we greatly help them. "Admirers, even lovers," says Miss 
Chattle, "may look over the wall, but the teacher must actually 
enter. They who do so must pass through a narrow gate — the gate 
of a few simple words, a few definite images, a few primal feelings. 
They must let fall from their shoulders their abstractions, the fruits 
of reason, the slowly garnered knowledge of the centuries." 

To succeed in its work of religious education the Sunday school 
must take its pupils as they are and make of them what they should 
become. To do this teachers must know children. It is the real 
child, not an imaginary child, who is to be nurtured. Until all Sun- 
day-school teachers place the child in the midst, studying and learn- 
ing of him before they attempt to teach him, our work will not be 
as successful as it should be. We must take the characteristics that 
the child manifests in his daily life and, utilizing them, building 
upon them, and transforming them, make of them what they ought 
to be. The child as he is constitutes our raw material. Or, to make 
use of our most significant concept— that of growth — the charac- 
teristics we discover in him, whatever they may be, are the root 
and stem from which we are charged to grow the perfect flower 
of a beautiful Christian life. 

i. THE BEGINNER 

i. Body. — At his third birthday the child weighs about thirty 
pounds ; at his sixth, about forty-five pounds. His height at three 
is about thirty-six inches ; at six, about forty-four inches. The 
girl shows a slightly less rate of growth. At three the brain has 
attained to seven ninths of its adult weight; at six to about nine 
tenths. "The motor centers of the hand and fingers are still im- 
mature"; fine and accurate movements are therefore difficult. The 
larger muscles are well developed. The senses are acute. The 
sense of sight is at its best; that of hearing is highly developed; 
the sense of touch is keen. There is less of restlessness than in 
the years just ahead. Quiet games are pleasing, but there is a desire 
for motion, and a considerable measure of physical activity is highly 
desirable. 

2. Mind. — The whole mind of the little child is eager, inquiring, 
insistent. 

a. The intellect develops rapidly. Up to six years the child gets 
more new sensations and perceptions than in all the remainder of 
his life. He is constantly accumulating the concrete data he will 
use later in his thinking. Even now he reasons in his own simple, 



EARLY CHILDHOOD 51 

childish way. The memory is accumulating innumerable impressions 
that will be retained through all later life. Questions are constant. 
"What is it?" "May I see?" "What did you say?" Such ques- 
tions as these are followed a little later by the endless repetition of 
"Why?" "How?" "What for?" The seeking, questioning mind 
offers to the religious teacher as to the day-school teacher one of 
the supreme opportunities of education. Let curiosity be fostered, 
not repressed ; the spirit of inquiry turned toward high and worthy 
objects. The mind of the little child will be satisfied; denied the 
teachers it should have, it seeks others and, sad to say, finds its 
satisfaction in that w T hich is base and untrue. Because of lack of 
knowledge and experience the child is credulous, ready to believe 
anything that is told him. This is a part of his capacity for faith, 
but it likewise makes him the victim of fears and false beliefs im- 
parted by unworthy teachers. 

b. Feeling in the little child is more powerful than thought or will. 
He is under the almost complete domination of the feelings associ- 
ated with the physical nature, such as hunger, fear, thirst, and pain. 
His feelings of joy and grief, while intense, are short-lived; laughter 
and tears are ever close to the surface, ready to break out at any 
moment; they come and pass more quickly than a summer shower. 
The little child is peculiarly liable to tormenting fears. These may 
arise from slight suggestions, thoughtlessly made. The child's 
prayer so commonly taught to little children even yet, "Now I lay 
me down to sleep," with its unfortunate suggestion "If I should die 
before I wake," has put terror into the hearts of innumerable chil- 
dren. Every little child should have sympathy and should be helped 
to overcome his fears. 

Other feelings prominent in the little child are of special signifi- 
cance for religion. He strongly feels his dependence and is trustful 
and confiding. He is often filled with a sense of wonder and awe. 
He is affectionate, and his love may be readily developed. 

c. The purposeful, deliberative will is almost non-existent in young 
children. Sooner or later the little child discovers that he has a will 
of his own, and it becomes a satisfaction to him to exercise it. 
What we call the child's stubbornness may be simply persistent at- 
tention. In considering the persistence of a little child in a given 
situation it should be noted: (1) that desire and interest may so 
completely hold attention that nothing else comes before the mind ; 
(2) that inhibition — that is, the power to check his impulses and the 
power to direct attention in a new channel — is weak; and (3) that 
he is so reveling in the satisfaction of a new and novel experience 



52 THE PUPIL 

that he does not want to turn from it. At some time during this 
period the first explosive, determined "I won't" is likely to be heard. 
Merely telling the child not to do a thing or to stop doing a thing 
simply centers his attention upon it. Sometimes all that is neces- 
sary is to set up a rival center of attention. At other times, by 
tactful, loving means, the child should be led to see that respect 
and obedience is due to the will of parents and teachers. 

3. Distinguishing Characteristics of the Beginner. — Think now 
of the child of beginners' age whom you know best. Before read- 
ing further set down on paper briefly his outstanding characteristics. 
This is the first item of the constructive task that forms an impor- 
tant part of this lesson. 

a. He is the center of his world. Everybody and everything that 
the little child knows exists for him. This is not selfishness ; it is 
simply the child and his world as made by God. As a part of the 
instinct of self-preservation nature has provided that desire shall 
center in the satisfaction of physical appetite. The baby makes no 
distinction between himself and his world. In the beginning of this 
period the child is coming into the realization of himself as an 
individual ; the consciousness of his powers is a new experience. 
He has not had time to orient himself. The feeling of "my" and 
"mine" is intense; he knows little or nothing of "you" and "yours." 
Asserting his newly discovered will, exercising his newly realized 
powers, thrills him and gives him a sense of peculiar satisfaction. 
Near the close of the period the social consciousness begins to 
develop, but throughout early childhood we may expect him to be 
much more concerned with himself, his own desires and feelings, 
than with those of others. 

b. He is constantly active. His whole physical being, as we have 
seen, is keyed to motion. The rapid growth of the larger muscles 
and the development of both body and brain drive the child to 
incessant activity. It is an impossibility, if he is physically normal, 
for him to keep absolutely still for more than a few seconds at a 
time. His activity is like steam; forced confinement inevitably 
results in an explosion. There is no way to decrease it except to 
dampen the fire; no way to stop it except to put the fire out. 

The senses crave satisfaction, and sensations and physical activity 
interact. It is by activity that new sensations are gained. New 
sensations in turn stimulate to new activity. Thus, the child comes 
very near representing perpetual motion. He has not yet achieved 
any considerable degree of voluntary control ; to scold or blame 
him for his activity is to do him a wrong. His activity is not 



EARLY CHILDHOOD 53 

restlessness, as it is so often called; it is nature's means of assuring 
his physical, mental, and moral development. 

The child's activity principally takes the form of play. With the 
child play is spontaneous. It is the child's real life. If he is denied 
play, he is denied the possibility of being a child, of living a child's 
life. We should study the child at play, for then we see him as he 
is. In his play we may observe him in all his moods. At times his 
play is joyous, exuberant, hilarious; at other times as serious and 
meaningful as the work of an adult. It is intense, for the child 
puts his whole self into his play. The natural plays of children in- 
volve activities and train muscles that will be of use in later life. 
Thus play is of real value as preparation for mature life. Said 
Froebel : "Play holds the sources of all that is good. . . . The 
spontaneous play of the child discloses the future inner life of the 
man." If appeal to the play spirit is not used by the Sunday school, 
the strongest interest of childhood is neglected — the one surest 
means of modifying conduct and influencing character. 

In this period play is almost wholly individual. In the Sunday 
school, as in the kindergarten, group plays may be used, but there 
will be little group spirit or "togetherness" ; each child plays for 
himself. Companionship there will be, however, and through play 
of this sort the beginnings of social consciousness may be nurtured. 

c. He has urgent, eager senses. Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, 
and touching are very active and crave exercise. Perception comes 
before thought. The senses develop earlier than the higher powers 
of the mind — as thought, reasoning and judgment — and now, if 
ever, they must become keen, accurate, and discriminating. Sense 
training and muscular control are needed as a basis for later moral 
training. In this period observation especially is not accurate. Many 
so-called false statements of the child are simply the result of in- 
accurate observation. 

d. He has a strong, vivid imagination. Much of the joy of child- 
hood grows out of the wonderful, transforming power of the child's 
imagination. A tiny blanket tightly rolled and tied about one end 
with a string to Eloise becomes a beautiful doll. John, son of an 
artisan, rides across the floor astride a prancing steed. To the adult 
it is only a broomstick, but what young prince of fortune ever had 
a more glorious ride in his father's limousine than has John? The 
child's fancy is so rich that there is no need for any likeness between 
the symbol and that for which it stands. 

The child's world is a world of the unseen. Fairies and pygmies 
are quite as real to the child mind and often seem far more interest- 



54 THE PUPIL 

ing than the people and the creatures of the objective world. That 
God and Jesus are unseen does not make the spiritual unreal to the 
child. "Granmuddy," says little Jane, as quoted by Miss Chattle, 
"pretty soon Jane and Jesus will go for a little walk; would you 
like to come with us?" "To walk with Jane and Jesus!" 

Though the imagination of some children may seem to parents 
and teachers wildly fanciful and wholly ungoverned, there is seldom 
cause for anxiety. Let the imagination be viewed as an asset for 
faith and future achievement rather than as a danger. 

Allied to the imagination is the tendency the child has to endow 
the familiar objects of his world with spirit and personality. He 
thinks of them as having the same kind of life as he has. The 
doll, the toy animal, the tin soldier, the pets with which he plays, 
and even the flowers and the trees have all the attributes that he 
possesses. To him they think as he thinks and feel as he feels. 
All of this is innocent fancy and is not without its spiritual signifi- 
cance. Certainly it is nothing for which the child should be rebuked. 
Much less is it to be regarded as "superstition" of which his mind 
is to be rudely disabused. 

e. He constantly imitates others. Imitation is one of the most 
marked instincts of early childhood. It is seen in all children, al- 
though some are more imitative than others. It is one of the princi- 
pal means by which the child is enabled to profit by the experience 
of his parents. A partial basis for imitation is to be found in the child's 
desire for the experience, strange to him, of the person he is 
observing. The significance of imitation for our work of religious 
education is very great. It is this which makes example so large 
a part of teaching. The teacher's pupils become what the teacher 
is. "Life grows like what it imitates." It is the tremendous re- 
sponsibility of religious nurture to see that nothing takes place in 
the sight of a little child which it is undesirable to have him reenact 
in his own life ; that no trait be exhibited before him which would 
not be desirable in his own character. 

/. He acts on suggestion. As we have seen, the child's nature 
is such that all suggestions tend to work out into action. The little 
child's power to inhibit — that is, to check his impulses — is unde- 
veloped. He has little experience or knowledge to guide him in 
distinguishing between good and bad, truth and falsehood. He is 
seldom to be blamed, therefore, for wrong actions or false state- 
ments. He should be guarded with care that no evil suggestions 
or false statements are made to him. 

"I wonder what put that into his head 1" is an exclamation often 



EARLY CHILDHOOD 55 

heard. It is frequently difficult to trace the suggestion. The child 
is so suggestible that chance statements, careless remarks, and 
transient attitudes are almost as likely to be taken up and acted 
upon as direct suggestions. 

One of the most potent ways of leading and influencing a child 
is by suggestion. It may be largely used to modify conduct and it 
may be counted upon at all times to be influential over the imagina- 
tion and the feelings as well as over the will. 

2. THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE BEGINNER 

Our study of the Beginner has already revealed the fact that his 
religious life is very different from that of adults. Our task is to 
nurture the beginnings of moral and religious life that we find in 
him. Let us keep before us our governing principle, "The needs of 
the pupil are the law of the school." This means that in the reli- 
gious education of the little child we are to bring to him that which 
the needs of his spiritual life require. Keeping in mind the charac- 
teristics we have found in him, let us inquire further concerning the 
needs they reveal and how these needs may be met. 

1. Environment. — Since the little child unconsciously and continu- 
ally absorbs from his surroundings, it is important to make his en- 
vironment as nearly ideal from the moral and religious standpoint 
as possible. The helplessness of the little child in this particular 
should appeal constantly to us ; he is powerless to resist the im- 
pressions made upon him. We who are older are his protectors and 
we must shield him from all that is ugly, evil, or in any way in- 
jurious. We must see to it that he is brought into contact only 
with the pure, the beautiful, and the good. 

The environment within the Sunday school should be beautiful, 
attractive to the little child, and such as will foster religious feeling. 
Large expenditure is not necessarily required to achieve this result. 
The child ought always to be able to think of his Sunday school 
with joy. 

Environment includes persons as well as tfiings. The little child 
is constantly being influenced by those about him. He copies the 
actions of his parents, brothers and sisters, his playmates, and his 
teachers. His character will tend to be of the same quality as what 
he sees and hears. 

The first element in religious education is to bring the child into 
contact with religion itself. Moral training consists, first of all, in 
surrounding him with right examples and influences. 

2. Instruction. — What are the needs of little children that can 



56 THE PUPIL 

be met by lessons? Those who have provided the International 
Graded Lessons, Beginners' Course, "The Little Child and the 
Heavenly Father," have had certain definite needs in mind. These 
are indicated by the aim, stated as follows : 

To lead the little child to the Father by helping him : 

i. To know God, the heavenly Father, who loves him, provides 
for, and protects him. 

2. To know Jesus, the Son of God, who became a little child, who 
went about doing good, and who is the Friend and Saviour of little 
children. 

3. To know about the heavenly home. 

4. To distinguish between right and wrong. 

5. To show his love for God by working with him and for others. 

These lessons present a few themes, all of which are within the 
range of the child's understanding. A leading concept is that of 
God as Father — the heavenly Father who cares lovingly for all his 
creatures, who protects us and provides for our wants by giving us 
the good gifts of life. Another leading theme is that of Jesus, our 
Friend and Saviour, who cares for us and teaches us how to help 
others. Other lessons suggest how little children may be obedient, 
how they may show their love by care, by kindness, by thanksgiving 
and praise, and by helping others. 

The lessons are in the form of stories. The reasons for this, are 
perfectly clear: (a) The little child loves stories and experiences 
pure joy in hearing them. They appeal to him as few things do, 
and their power to influence him is unlimited. The child never 
lived who could not be interested and helped by stories, (b) Again, 
the child mind is not prepared for abstract ideas. He requires con- 
crete teaching, and the story is one of the most concrete ways of 
teaching that is known, (c) Yet again, the story acts through 
suggestion and, because of the suggestibility of the little child, is 
more effective than the presentation of truth in direct statement. 
The precept "Little children should obey their parents" may be 
entirely lost upon the c^ild, but a story of children who obeyed their 
parents and reaped the fruit of satisfaction will not fail of teaching 
the desired lesson. 

Repetition is an important principle in teaching little children. 
They desire to hear the same story many times, and the impression 
is deepened by repetition. 

3,. Worship. — The music, the hymns, the worship in prayer, the 
whole atmosphere of the session, the lesson story, and, perhaps more 
than all, the attitude and example of the teachers will be the means 



EARLY CHILDHOOD 57 

to be relied upon for the nurture of the religious feelings. Ever 
present with the teacher should be the realization that one cannot 
cause the child to feel what one does not himself feel. The first 
preparation for the nurture of the religious feelings is the possession 
of these feelings. Desired feelings can never be aroused by com- 
mand or injunction. "Children, you must be reverent!" accomplishes 
nothing in awakening reverence. This is because the child is him- 
self powerless to awaken any feeling in his own heart by an act 
of will. Feeling always comes unbidden as the result of indirect 
stimulus. When indirect means fail, the teacher naturally, almost 
involuntarily, falls back upon commands and injunctions. We 
should realize, in the beginning, the uselessness of this method. 

Music and hymns are of first importance. All music should be 
chosen with care and discriminaiton. Serious mistakes are often 
made at this point. All hymns used should be little children's 
hymns, tested as to the words, the ideas, and the tune. 

The prayers of the teacher should be brief and simple. Their 
purpose is to aid the little children to worship. To do this they 
must express the child's thought and feeling. A Beginners' teacher 
said to her class, "Would you like to speak to God in your own 
words?" "Oh," said a little boy, "you say for us just what we 
want to say." The teacher's prayer should aim to do just this. 
Should the children themselves be expected to pray? It should be 
the aim of the teacher to develop both the attitude and the habit 
of prayer in the pupils. To accomplish this aim it is necessary for 
the children to pray. There is no other way so effective in estab- 
lishing conscious fellowship between the child and the heavenly 
Father. Some of the best of the familiar prayers for little children 
should be used, all the children being led to memorize them and 
use them. It should be remembered that the repetition of familiar 
words is not always prayer. The use of form prayers is not enough. 
Frequently, after the telling of the story, the teacher should encour- 
age the children to express in their own words their feeling of love 
and gratitude. 

4. Training in Christian Conduct and Service. — In the early 
part of this period the child has very little moral consciousness ; for 
this reason there is little or no moral or immoral quality in his 
actions. There are no bad little children. One of the most impor- 
tant elements in the formation of good character in the child is the 
gradual building up of the habit of choosing the right. 

How can the habit of right choice be developed? (a) With little 
children this is first of all a matter of directing the attention. If 



58 THE PUPIL 

attention is habitually directed in right ways, a will is gradually 
built up to do the thing that ought to be done, (b) A prerequisite 
of moral choice is a knowledge of right and wrong. In the absence 
of definite instruction the child forms his ideas of right and wrong 
by what he sees in the conduct of his parents, his teachers, and other 
children, and by what is permitted and what is forbidden him. He 
needs right examples. He needs also stories that picture right con- 
duct in ways which make it seem attractive and desirable to him. 
(c) The choice of right, even when clearly perceived, is influenced 
by feeling, desire, and impulse. Whatever strengthens feeling and 
desire in behalf of the right aids the will. One of the best ways 
in this period of doing this is to insure that the result of a right 
choice shall be pleasurable and of a wrong choice disagreeable. 

Activity is the larger part of learning. This, which holds true 
for all periods of life, seems especially true of the Beginners' period. 
Without expression there is no teaching, no learning. The little 
child's mind abounds in impulses of good that are of religious sig- 
nificance. The lesson story will often quicken an impulse to show 
love, kindness, or sympathy, to share with another, or to help an- 
other. Our part is to suggest and to provide ways by which these 
impulses may find expression. To allow them to go unexpressed can 
only result in impoverishing and deadening the spiritual nature. 
There are many little kindly acts of service possible to little chil- 
dren as individuals and as classes. 

Opportunities should frequently be given for the children to retell 
the story in their own words. Sometimes the story will lend itself 
to simple dramatization. At other times it may be retold in draw- 
ings. The service of these simple forms of expression is threefold : 
they insure that the impression will be deepened and become a 
permanent possession, they reveal to the teacher the nature of the 
impressions that are being given, and they suggest ways by which 
the teacher may correct the children's ideas and inspire higher ideals. 

Simple forms of handwork should be used. Pictures in the pupil's 
folders may be colored with crayons ; pictures illustrating the stories, 
supplied by the teacher, may be mounted, and simple Christmas and 
Easter cards may be made for sending to parents, to friends, to the 
home for crippled children, or to the children's ward of the hospital. 
Cutting from bold outlines, paper tearing, and other forms of hand- 
work, such as are described in teachers' periodicals and in books 
on the subject, undoubtedly have value. 

The teacher should not think of expression as confined to the 
Sunday session. Ways should be suggested by which the child may 



EARLY CHILDHOOD 59 

carry out the teachings of the story in the home life. As frequently 
as possible the teacher should meet her class on a week afternoon 
for some form of helpful expressional activity. 

5. Results to be Expected. — The standard for a Beginners* De- 
partment states that the conduct of a Beginner may manifest 

(a) Love, trust, and reverence for God. 

(b) Association of the heavenly Father with daily life. 

(c) Right behavior. 

(d) Love for God through prayer, praise, and effort to please him. 

(e) Love for others through acts of helpfulness. 

It is in such terms as these that we should think of the religious 
life of the little child. He is a little child, not an adult. We must 
not judge him by adult standards. If the conditions of nurture we 
have named have been met, he will live in fellowship with the spirit- 
ual. He will think of himself as a child of God. The religious life 
will seem natural to him. He will love the heavenly Father and 
Jesus, his Friend and Saviour, because he has an affectionate nature. 
He will trust because the Father seems to him to be trustworthy. 
He will be joyful because God has given him so many things richly 
to enjoy. He will be kind and he will be gradually learning to be 
obedient, unselfish, to share with others, and to realize the meaning 
of duty. He will be a child with a child's limitations. We would 
not have him be anything else. We value the real in him and have 
no desire for the unreal and the precocious. 

II. CONSTRUCTIVE TASK 

1. Before studying the lesson statement think of some 
four or five-year-old child whom you know very well. 
What are some of the most prominent characteristics you 
have seen in him? 

2. After studying the lesson statement write again on 
the characteristics of this same child, correcting and supple- 
menting your previous statement. Give illustrations from 
this child's conduct of the characteristics mentioned in the 
lesson statement. 

3. After studying the lesson statement write on the fol- 
lowing: 

a. Give as many reasons as you can why right example 
is of importance in teaching Beginners. 

b. Is a little child a sinner? Explain your answer. 

c. What can you say concerning the significance of play? 
How can the Beginners' teacher utilize play in her work? 



60 THE PUPIL 



III. MEMORY ASSIGNMENT 

"There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
The earth and every common sight, 
To me did seem appareled in celestial light — 
The glory and the freshness of a dream." 

— William Wordsworth. 

IV. REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

I. In "The Worker and Work" Series 

i. Characteristics of Beginners: Beginners' Worker and Work, Chap. II. 

2. The significance of play: Beginners' Worker and Work, Chaps. Ill, 

XII. 

3. First training in religion: Beginners' Worker and Work, Chap. VI. 

4. Teaching the Beginner to pray: Beginners' Worker and Work, Chap. 

XIV. 
II. In the Library 

1. The nature, scope, and problems of child study: Fundamentals of 

Child Study, Kirkpatrick, Chap. I. 

2. The senses: The Psychology of Childhood, Tracy, Chap. I. 

3. The feelings: The Unfolding Life, Lamoreaux, pp. 75/f. 

4. Lessons for Beginners: Life in the Making, Barclay, Brown, et al., 

Chap. IV. 



CHAPTER VII 

MIDDLE CHILDHOOD 

I. LESSON STATEMENT 

Years ago, in his humble country home, a godly farmer was ac- 
customed to spend a part of Sunday afternoon in teaching hymns 
and Bible verses to his children. One Sunday the lesson was Charles 
Wesley's immortal hymn "A Charge to Keep I Have:" Taking his 
little daughter Frances on his knee, he talked with her about the 
heavenly Father's purpose for her life. He told her that the Creator 
•had brought her into the world that she might fulfill the verse — 

"To serve the present age, 
My calling to fulfill; 
Oh, may it all my powers engage, 
To do my Master's will." 

From that day the child understood that she was not her own; 
that God had a great purpose in her life ; and an abiding resolution 
took possession of her to fulfill that purpose. Throughout her 
life her loyalty to her childhood's resolution never faltered. The 
world will forever be richer because of the wonderful way in which 
Frances E. Willard served her day and generation. 

The years of middle childhood (six, seven, and eight) are impres- 
sionable years. Little do we know whereunto the seed planted in 
the fallow soil of the Primary child's mind will grow if only it may 
be properly nurtured through succeeding years. 

i. THE PRIMARY CHILD 

i. Body. — It is not to be thought that there is any clearly marked 
dividing line between early and middle childhood. Physical growth 
is continuous and is usually comparatively slow. The weight at six 
is approximately one third of that of the adult. The gain in weight 
during middle childhood is about thirty-one per cent; the increase in 
height slightly over thirteen per cent. The organs of the body are 
not equally developed. The heart is relatively small, having only 
about one fourth of its adult weight, whereas it is compelled to 
force the blood over a body that has attained to two thirds of its 

61 



62 THE PUPIL 

adult height. Consequently, the period is marked by quick fatigue, 
the eighth year being sometimes called "the fatigue year." Children 
of this age are frequently thought to be lazy or indolent, when in 
reality they lack physical energy. The supreme physical need is for 
plain food and an abundance of air, sunshine, sleep, and outdoor 
exercise. 

2. Mind.— At about the time the child enters the period of middle 
childhood an epochal change takes place. His school life begins. 
Who cannot remember his first day at school? The child goes daily 
out of the home to the larger world of school. This gives him two 
prominent centers of interest, school and home, instead of one. The 
number of his acquaintances and playmates is greatly increased. 
He is given definitely assigned tasks and is held responsible for 
performing them. His individuality thus receives new recognition, 
and he comes to have an increased consciousness of his own impor- 
tance. Moreover, he no longer lives only in the present. He remem- 
bers the days of early childhood and many of his experiences in 
them, and he anticipates the days that are to come. "When I am 
a man," says seven-years-old, "I am going to be an engineer and 
build a big bridge." 

a. The intellect is gradually increasing its stock of knowledge. 
By the time the child has arrived at his sixth birthday he is in 
possession of a large number of ideas. The beginning of his school 
life serves to rapidly widen his mental horizon. The growing 
ability to read contributes to his increase of knowledge. He begins 
to take increased interest in relating the separate items of his knowl- 
edge. His ability to analyze, to discover causes, and to note results 
is growing. It is this that tempers his imagination. He makes more 
use of reason. He is less credulous. He begins to test the state- 
ments he hears. He now asks "Why?" more often than "What?" 
He takes his toys to pieces to see how they are made. Fondness 
for stories increases, but no longer is there marked desire for the 
same story over and over. "Tell me a new story" is the oft re- 
peated plea. A new demand for certainty appears. Children at play 
will be frequently heard contradicting one another. There is much 
positive assertion. Such terms as "honest," "truly," "hope to die," 
"cross your heart," are in almost constant use. Candor and out- 
spokenness are marked. The frank, unvarnished statements of a 
child often prove embarrassing to parents and teachers who fail 
to speak the out-and-out truth. The power of memory is increas- 
ing. The concrete is rapidly and distinctly recalled. It is now 
easier to memorize words and sentences. 



MIDDLE CHILDHOOD 63 

b. The feelings still dominate action. The Primary child is in- 
fluenced more by his feelings than by thought or will — that is, his 
conduct is determined to a greater extent by feeling than by de- 
liberative choice. This is partly because his feelings are more in- 
tense and explosive than they will be in later years. 

c. The will now begins to be used for conscious, definite ends. 
The conscious, deliberative will is now present. Purposive, willed 
action gradually increases. Mrs. Mumford tells of Donald, who 
said, "When I just want something it's my wish, but my will is what 
makes me do what is right. I have to use my will against my wish." 
Then, after a moment, "Sometimes the wish sticks to you so close 
you can hardly use your will." Perhaps this is a bit abnormal in 
its keenness of self-examination, but something analogous to this 
takes place in the inner thought of the average Primary child. He 
becomes conscious of his power of will as he has not been before, 
and uses it. 

3. Distinguishing Characteristics of the Primary Child. — At 
this point take time to consider what are the most prominent charac- 
teristics of the conduct of one or more children of primary age 
whom you know intimately. Before reading what follows write 
the statement suggested in item one of the constructive task. 

a. The child now acts more in accord with defined ideas. While 
the joy of the younger child is chiefly in free, uncontrolled move- 
ments, the Primary child delights in actions which show what he 
can do. Clearly defined ends come into view and more and more 
determine the forms activity shall take. However, there is still 
much activity that is impulsive. This, together with the lack of 
power of concentrated attention, and the fact that fatigue is still 
somewhat easily induced by sustained activity in a particular line, 
results in frequent and sudden changes in the form of activity. 
The Primary child is not able to continue to do the same thing for 
any great length of time. 

Play is still the child's life. At about seven plays of the imagina- 
tion reach their culmination and then begin to decline in interest. 
Play becomes increasingly purposeful. Games are principally in- 
dividualistic; there is no real team play. Group games are enjoyed, 
and there is a certain happy companionship manifest in them ; but 
each child plays almost wholly for himself. For weeks during her 
seventh winter Eloise played at building and furnishing an Eskimo 
house in the deep snow of the front yard. The constructive effort 
involved was purposeful, but the imaginative element was also 
marked. The increasing interest in ends is one element in leading 



64 THE PUPIL 

the child to turn from purely individual play to games. In games 
of the period the competitive element becomes increasingly promi- 
nent. With competition, interest in rules begins to be manifest and 
by the close of the period is strongly marked. Purposeful play and 
competitive games are an important element in the development of 
self-control. 

b. He is increasingly conscious of self. Somewhat less self- 
centered, self-interest continues to be prominent. The child gradu- 
ally learns consideration for the rights and feelings of others. 
Withal, self-consciousness is even more marked. Shyness and fear 
are more pronounced in the Beginner, but the Primary child is likely 
to be painfully bashful. This characteristic is variously manifested 
in the "stage-fright," the "showing off," and the "mock courage" 
so often seen in children of this age. At eight or nine the boy 
often delights to assume authority over younger children, com- 
manding them with much show and manifesting satisfaction in 
teasing and tormenting them. 

c. His imagination is tempered. The imagination of the Primary 
child is not less active than that of the Beginner, but it is gradually 
coming under the control of observation and reason. The differ- 
ence between fancy and fact is coming to be realized. There is 
still a fellowship with fairies and brownies, and there continues to 
be a real love for the marvelous ; but discrimination is developing. 
Concerning a story the question is likely to be asked, "Did it really 
happen, or is it a 'make-believe' story?" 

d. He continues to be highly imitative. Initiative and originality 
now enter increasingly into imitation. While the Beginner merely 
copies the actions of others, the Primary child adapts the actions to 
his own ends, modifying and changing them in doing so. He has 
the person in mind as well as the deed ; his desire is now beginning 
to take the form of wanting to be like the one who performs the act. 

2. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE PRIMARY CHILD 

Religious nurture is a continuous process throughout childhood 
and youth. There is no point at which the teacher may say : "My 
work is complete. Behold, here is the finished product." Life is 
growth; and in order that moral and religious development may be 
constant, religious nurture must not be intermittent. The task of 
the Primary teacher is to recognize the life of the spirit in the chil- 
dren who come to her from the Beginners' Department and by every 
means within her power encourage the life present in them. What 
are the outstanding moral and religious needs of children of this age? 



MIDDLE CHILDHOOD 65 

1. Environment. — While other elements in environment continue 
to be important, the element of persons with whom the child is 
surrounded becomes of increased importance. As the personal ele- 
ment has entered into imitation, personal influence becomes a still 
more important factor in moral and religious nurture. The mere 
act is no longer as influential as before; the child observes and 
imitates /the person. More than by anything else the child will be 
helped by the opportunity of sharing the life of Christlike people 
whom he admires and loves. 

The new element of companionship in play constitutes the play- 
ground either an asset or a liability. From companions of the right 
kind the child learns constantly lessons in unselfish conduct, truth- 
fulness, honesty, and fairness. If the child's companions cheat, lie, 
quarrel and fight, and use impure and vulgar language, the influ- 
ence will be so positively demoralizing and vicious that the teaching 
of the Sunday school is likely to be wholly counteracted. The Sun- 
day-school teacher who does not want her effort to count for naught 
must cooperate with the home in securing wholesome playground 
associations for her pupils. 

2. Instruction. — The child's need to know the heavenly Father 
which existed during the years of early childhood continues. The 
development of his mental powers and his growth in experience 
makes it possible to broaden his knowledge of God the Father and 
of Jesus and to teach him more about how a child may respond 
to God's love and care. The International Graded Lessons, Primary 
Series, do this. The aim of these lessons is thus stated: 

To lead the child to know the heavenly Father and to inspire within 
him a desire to live as God's child : 

1. To show forth God's power, love, and care; and to awaken 
within the child responsive love, trust, and obedience. 

2. To build upon the teachings of the first year (1) by showing 
ways in which children may express their love, trust, and obedience ; 
(2) by showing Jesus the Saviour, in his love and work for men ; 
and (3) by showing how helpers t oi Jesus learn to do God's will. 

3. To build upon the work of the first and second years (1) by 
telling about people who chose to do God's will; (2) by telling how 
Jesus by his life and words, death and resurrection, revealed the 
Father's love and will for us; (3) by telling such stories as will 
make a strong appeal to the child and arouse within him a desire 
to choose and to do that which God requires of him. 

The themes of the lessons for the first year are similar to those 
of the Beginners' lessons. They present the thought of God as 
Creator and Father, his love, his care, and his protection of his 



66 THE PUPIL 

children, and suggest what God expects of his children by telling 
what others have done. The themes of the second and third years 
provide for teaching the children about Jesus and how children of 
this age may express love, trust, and obedience. 

The lessons are in the form of stories. The Primary child's un- 
bounded love for stories and joy in them insures that the story les- 
son will be far more effective than any other. The story interest 
is fitly described as a hunger. The child's demand for food is 
scarcely more insistent and certainly no more deep-seated than his 
demand for stories. We should no more think of starving his body 
than of starving his mind. 

Natural objects may be effectively used in teaching if the lesson 
to be drawn from them is direct. A minister talked to a Primary 
class on fruits of the Spirit, using apples as objects. At the close 
he asked them what were the fruits of the Spirit, and they replied 
in chorus, "Apples." Highly symbolical teaching is not understood. 
The day school uses pictures and various forms of handwork effec- 
tively, and the Sunday school may do the same. 

To what extent should memorization be used in this period? 
Opinions differ somewhat on this point. Memorization was un- 
doubtedly overstressed in the past, but we should not undervalue 
it on this account. The memorizing of choice Bible verses and 
select lines of religious poetry that can be understood and ap- 
preciated by the child is now easily possible and should be given 
a definite place. The child should not be required to memorize that 
which has no contact with his own experience. Not many decades 
ago the catechism was used almost exclusively in religious instruc- 
tion. Experience proved that it had little or no effect upon the life 
and conduct of children. The explanation is to be found in the 
fact that it had no point of contact with their daily life and experi- 
ence. They did not understand its abstract doctrinal statements. 
In spite of everything to be said in its favor its use declined and 
it has now practically ceased to have a place in elementary in- 
struction. 

The teacher should be prepared to suggest sources of suitable 
stories for children's reading. Stories other than those in the les- 
sons kept in mind by the teacher for occasional use in the Sunday- 
school session and at other times will be found to be a valuable 
asset. 

3. Worship. — It is to be 'remembered that desired feelings can 
be secured only indirectly, through ideas and through action. There 
can be no nurture of the feelings apart from instruction of the 



MIDDLE CHILDHOOD 67 

intellect and training of the will. The child is one. It is useless 
to exhort children, "Be loving!" "Be sympathetic !" "Be reverent!" 
expecting the desired feeling to answer to command. Stories of 
kindness and of loving deeds and the actual doing of acts of help- 
ful service are the only effective ways of awakening the feelings of 
kindness, sympathy, and the desire to help the needy and the un- 
fortunate. 

Worship is the most effective means of religious expression. All 
Primary worship should be thoughtfully and intelligently planned. 
If it is really to be worship, it must be children's worship — that is, 
in terms of their own thoughts and feelings. Jingles and doggerel 
are harmful in a service of worship and should be given no place. 
The prayers should be brief, should express the desires of a child, 
and should be such as will inspire and strengthen thought and feeling. 

The Primary Department should always be a joyous, happy place. 
The atmosphere should be one of smiles and sunshine. There is no 
religious quality in gloom. The child should be led to feel that it 
is his joyous privilege to love and obey and serve his heavenly 
Father. It is unnecessary to try to make him feel that he is a great 
sinner. Effort in this direction encourages pretense and substitutes 
theological opinions for the genuine religious impulses and feelings 
normal to the child of this age. 

4. Training in Christian Conduct and Character. — It is not 
to be expected that the child of Primary age will have attained 
to a clear recognition of a standard of right and wrong. Nor 
does the child know anything of the virtues, kindness, unselfish- 
ness, goodness, generosity, and so forth, as such. Moral problems 
exist for the child, but they are always concrete, expressed in 
terms of a particular situation. Abstract moralizing and exhortation 
therefore have little effect. What he needs is right examples, the 
picturing of right conduct, and an explanation of why specific acts 
are right or wrong. Here again we see the value of the story in 
moral training. The story pictures a concrete situation — makes a 
particular kind act attractive or a particular unkind act hideous. 

Character has been defined as "perfectly fashioned will." The 
fashioning of the will is by education, and the chief means of educa- 
tion is practice. "The will," says Elizabeth Harrison, "like every 
other muscle, organ, or faculty, becomes strong by being judicially 
exercised. . . . The will does not begin to grow until definite choice 
is made by the individual. Power to choose the right comes only 
from having chosen to do right many times." The teacher should 
help the child become conscious of his individual power of will, 



68 THE PUPIL 

respect it, and use it for his own higher good. Well-chosen stories 
of other children will here again be effective. 

It is important that moral faults, or what seem to be such in chil- 
dren of this age, should be under standingly dealt with. Children's 
lies, for example, may often be explained by the confusion of fancy 
for fact, which finds its basis in an overactive imagination. A vivid 
imagination should be distinguished from willful misrepresentation. 
In other cases lying may have a basis in fear. Corporal punishment 
sometimes creates such a basis by intensifying the fears of a child. 
Undoubtedly many children become habitually deceitful through the 
influence of fear. 

It is necessary that the child learn the meaning of authority and 
be trained to prompt obedience. The parent or teacher who permits 
the child to disobey and have his own way is both negligent and 
cruel. As a rule Primary children respond readily to direction ; they 
have small reserve powers of resistance and compulsion can be 
easily used with them. Our effort should be, however, not to com- 
pel obedience but to gain the hearty assent of the will in right doing. 
"The child having learned the meaning and value of obedience to 
commands," says Dix, "the next stage is that in which the parent 
or teacher invites cooperation in some action to achieve a good 
result. The child's personality is allowed larger scope to express 
itself in positive ways, but still under control, direction, and guidance. 
The form of direction is changed from that of a direct command 
to that of invitation or suggestion and is expressed by Tt would be 
a good thing if we did' or 'Let us do' so and so. . . . This may be 
called the cooperative stage of will, and it should be begun as soon 
as the child shows any readiness for it." 1 

Orderly, accurate work in the assigned handwork and definite, 
regular lesson preparation, even if a comparatively small amount, 
should be kindly but firmly required. 

If undirected, the activities of Primary children are chiefly im- 
pulsive. Under proper direction activities may be made one of the 
most important elements in religious education. Provision may be 
made for classroom expression through the retelling of the story, 
by drawing, paper-cutting, modeling, and by simple dramatization. 
Mere telling as a method of teaching has been so generally used in 
the Sunday school that many teachers inwardly protest against these 
activities as a part of the Sunday-school session. "It is not reli- 
gious teaching," they say. They seem to think that some special 



1 Child Study, Dix, p. 90. 



MIDDLE CHILDHOOD 69 

sanctity is attached to talking ! The principle underlying these forms 
of activity as methods of teaching is that it is necessary to get the 
truth into the mind through the muscles. Without some form "of 
expression there can be no real impression. 

The teacher should also plan for week-day expression. Ways of 
putting the lesson teaching into practice may be suggested. A con- 
nection should be established between the Sunday lessons and the 
home life of the child. He should be led to understand that his 
helpfulness in the home, the spirit in which he does errands, and 
his willingness to share in the work of the home are a test of his 
loyalty to the teachings of the Sunday school. Provision in con- 
nection with the lesson may be made for telling of opportunities 
that were offered during the week for kindness to animals and to 
birds, for helping the birds to build their nests, for kind acts to the 
aged, to the crippled, and to others who are unfortunate. Flowers 
may be grown for sending to the hospital, for the sick, and for 
decorating the church. Plans may be made for helping the poor 
in unostentatious ways. By such activities religious teaching may 
be taken out of lesson books and made to live in the lives of the 
boys and girls. 

5. Results to be Expected. — Is the Primary child who is inter- 
ested in the Sunday school, loyal to it and to its teaching, who 
loves the heavenly Father and sincerely desires to do the right, 
a Christian? He is a child Christian, just as he is an immature 
person, but as truly entitled to the name as is his grandmother. If 
rightly taught, he will think of God as his heavenly Father and will 
exercise toward him and toward Jesus Christ, his Saviour, the love, 
trust, obedience, and worship of a child. 

How much spontaneous religious expression should be expected? 
This depends now, as later, on the child, his temperament, and what 
he understands to be expected of him by his parents and teachers. 
With most children there will not be a great deal of religious ex- 
pression, because there is at this age very little introspection and 
self-analysis ; they have not learned to describe their inner states 
and feelings. At different times their conduct may be contradictory, 
and they may throughout the period show some undesirable quali- 
ties ; they reflect much of the life about them, the attitudes and 
conduct they see in their playmates and in their parents and teachers. 
Though morally imperfect, they are the children of the Father. He 
claims them, and if they are given any chance at all they respond 
to his love and care. 

To some children during this period there comes a religious ex- 



70 THE PUPIL 

perience that stands out in bold relief throughout the entire after 
life; but with the majority these years register a quiet, uneventful 
growth in the knowledge and love of the heavenly Father, a pro- 
gress in grace none the less real because it is unconscious. Some 
who study this chapter may have heard Commander Eva Booth tell 
how at the age of seven she was one night troubled and depressed. 
At last, unable to sleep, she arose and pattered down the stairs to 
her mother's room. In her mother's arms she was comforted by 
being told again the story of the heavenly Father's care and of the 
Saviour's love. For some reason — who can explain why? — the words 
sank deeper into her heart that night than ever before. Through 
the years the remembrance of them stayed with her. Again and 
again she has told the story to listening thousands, declaring with 
a sob in her voice, "My little bare feet going down the stairs that 
night were carrying me to Jesus." Frances E. Willard and Eva 
Booth are only two of thousands of effective Christian 'workers 
whom the faithful nurture of parents and teachers has caused to be 
sent forth for the healing and the saving of the world. 

II. CONSTRUCTIVE TASK 

1. Before studying the lesson statement make a thought- 
ful study of one or more children of Primary age whom 
you know well. Compare them with the Beginner you 
studied last week. What are the characteristics you see 
most prominently manifested? 

2. After studying the lesson statement write again on 
these same children, modifying and supplementing your 
previous statement in the light of your study. Give as 
many illustrations as possible from your own observation 
of important statements in the textbook. 

3. What memories do you have of your first days in 
school? Do you recall ways in which you were in especial 
need of moral and religious help in that early period of 
your life? 

4. Write briefly on the following : 

a. How would you distinguish between "children's lies" 
and the falsehoods of adults? 

b. What is the value of joyous companionship between 
Primary children and their teacher? 

c. In what sense may we say that the Primary boys and 
girls are Christians? 



MIDDLE CHILDHOOD 71 



III. MEMORY ASSIGNMENT 

"Those first affections, those shadowy recollections 
Which, be they what they may, 
Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 
Are yet the master light of all our seeing; 
Uphold us, cherish, and have power . . . 
. . . Truths that wake to perish never; 
Which neither listlessness nor mad endeavor, 

Xor man nor boy, 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish or destroy." 

— William Wordsworth. 



IV. REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

In the Library 

1. Characteristics of the Primary child: Outline of a Bible-School Cur- 

riculum, Pease, pp. 78/r*. 

2. The problem of discipline: Children's Rights, Wiggin, pp. 141 if. 



CHAPTER VIII 

LATER CHILDHOOD 

I. LESSON STATEMENT 

The Junior's world is peopled, not with fairies and other crea- 
tures of the imagination, but with real folks. He lives in a won- 
derful world, but the wonder attaches to things as they are, to 
the achievements of men of action, to places and the things which 
have happened in them, and to the. manifold forms of animal and 
plant life. The world of nature is an open book to him, and he 
lives in as intimate fellowship with it as did primitive man. He 
has also awakened to a fuller understanding of what he reads, and 
the world of literature is opening up to him. 

i. THE JUNIOR 

i. Body. — Growth is now slower. At about nine years of age the 
rate of growth is slowest. The increase in weight in boys from 
nine to twelve is approximately twenty-nine per cent; in height less 
than eleven per cent. The increase of weight in girls is approxi- 
mately thirty-seven per cent and in height about thirteen per cent. 
The heart now has its chance to catch up. The health in general 
is very good; the appetite voracious. The body is gaining strength, 
resistance, and vitality against the strain of the years to come and 
is well-nigh immune to contagion, exposure, and accident. 

2. Mind. — Mental development during this period is more marked 
than physical growth. 

a. The intellect manifests new vigor. Ability to read easily and 
with appreciation has been acquired, and this increases the child's 
contact with life. The powers of reasoning are somewhat increased. 
Interest is manifested in puzzles, riddles, and guessing games. This 
is the golden period for memorization. Verbal and mechanical 
memorization is now at its best. Sufficient drill will fix almost any- 
thing in mind. The time to learn languages, word forms, tables of 
all kinds, and names is^ at hand. The realization of time sequence 
is increased. Observation is now more accurate than formerly. The 
collecting interest is at its height. Collections of stamps, postcards, 
insects, stones, and other things are eagerly made. The boy often 

72 



LATER CHILDHOOD 73 

develops a marked constructive interest in some form of handicraft, 
in mechanics, or in electricity. The reading interest continues to 
increase throughout the period. It centers in stories of adventure 
and of travel, in biography, and in history in which the element of 
action is prominent. 

b. The feelings are strong but not deep. They are changeable and 
transient, but they are gradually acquiring somewhat more of depth 
and stability. There is whole-hearted delight in wholesome fun and 
the development of a richer sense of humor, while at the same time 
there is capacity for a deeper seriousness. This is shown in the 
personal friendships of the boy or girl of eleven as compared with 
the child of seven or eight. The social feelings are expanding. A 
capacity for loyalty exists, and when loyalty is awakened the Junior 
will perform with fidelity tasks involving responsibility. 

c. The personal will begins to be asserted somewhat strongly. 
The Junior is likely to be more self-assertive than the Primary child. 
The will is not yet sufficiently developed to give decisions and choices 
permanent significance ; the child is still changeable and not infre- 
quently reverses himself. 

3. Distinguishing Characteristics. — What may be said to be the 
outstanding characteristics of Junior boys and girls? What appears 
most significant as we observe their conduct? 

a. Wonderful energy and activity is manifested. President G. 
Stanley Hall characterizes this period by saying, "Activity is greater 
and more varied than it ever was before or ever will be again, and 
there is peculiar vitality, endurance, and resistance to fatigue." 
Both boys and girls throw themselves into various forms of motor 
activity with absolute abandon, pure joy, and satisfaction. They 
despise ; ease; they want to do many and hard things. They seem 
led by an irresistible impulse to exercise every muscle, to match 
strength to strength, and to use every effort to excel. They must 
have variety ; work involving sustained effort of one kind is dis- 
tasteful. Their action is not of the noiseless variety. 

b. Fondness is shown for outdoor life and sports. The child lives 
in fellowship with nature. The boy wants to hunt, trap, go fishing, 
wander in the woods, build caves or huts. A bonfire has an irre- 
sistible charm. Girls are more domestic, but they also enjoy active, 
outdoor games. This is the age when the boy and his dog are 
inseparable companions. The boy knows no fear of the animal crea- 
tion ; it is sheer delight to him to catch a snake by the tail, chase 
an older girl with it, and finally place it in the school teacher's desk. 

c. A growing independence is in evidence. The Junior has new 



74 THE PUPIL 

self-assertion, and independence is increasingly shown. The de- 
pendence of early childhood is gone. The boy especially is light- 
hearted, carefree, and irresponsible ; a daring and adventurous crea- 
ture, ready to act on his own initiative. He wants to try out his 
own powers; to test his own strength and ability. Independence 
is tempered by a respect for authority which leads to ready con- 
formity to rules and law. The boy now has his first strong impulse 
to run away. There are few boys who during these years do not 
have at least one minor escapade of one kind or another. The 
typical school truant is of Junior age. Recently the newspapers told 
of two eleven-year-old boys being overtaken driving out of Chicago 
in a grocer's delivery wagon en route to Montana to shoot Indians. 
They had an old musket and a toy pistol, a can of dried beef, and 
seventeen loaves of bread. 

d. The Junior is a hero-worshiper. At this age boys and girls 
must have a hero. The first element they look for is achievement; 
beyond this the boy is most likely to seek qualities of physical 
strength, daring, and courage. Other qualities, however, may make 
a strong appeal, and the character idealized, if the Junior is left 
entirely free to make his own choice, may be very different from 
what he should have chosen. 

e. The social instinct begins to manifest itself strongly, especially 
toward the close of the period. Both boys and girls show some 
tendency to form groups or "gangs." These spontaneous groups 
do not have the cohesiveness or tenacity which will later charac- 
terize them. They are easily broken, and new ones as easily formed. 
While there is a marked craving for companionship, individuality 
of action is still strong. Team play is not yet at its best. 

/. The sexes are beginning to draw apart. The boy has a kind 
of contempt for his weaker, less adventurous sister; and the girl 
looks critically on her brother's rudeness and his lack of care for 
appearances. 

g. A new regard for exactness and literalness is in evidence. The 
child has ceased to live in the world of fancy; the imagination of 
the little child which transformed the immediate world about him 
has gone. The Junior is matter-of-fact. He wants exactness and 
literal statement. His interest in fairy stories has declined. He 
does not now want stories with an imaginative element, but instead 
narratives that present experiences of real persons. 

2. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE JUNIOR 

The outstanding characteristics that we have discovered in study- 



LATER CHILDHOOD 75 

ing the Junior show that he has grown in every dimension. The 
child of ten or eleven is not merely larger than the child of seven 
or eight; he has changed. Something more than physical growth 
has taken place ; there has been an inner development that makes 
the Junior very different from the Primary pupil. This development 
has enlarged the opportunity of moral and religious teaching and 
training. The possibility is offered of a broader appeal, with as- 
surance of a more significant ^response and a more permanent in- 
fluence. 

1. Environment. — It is of first importance that the Junior's asso- 
ciates be of the right sort. Often the first necessity in changing 
a Junior's conduct is to change his or her companions. If the 
cooperation of parents is secured, and the homes opened for pleasant 
evenings together, the Junior class may be made the group or 
"gang." This is important because the group life into which the 
Junior now enters constitutes for him a social order to which he 
is very responsive. He desires to stand well with the other members 
of the group ; he accepts the laws of the "gang" as his rules of 
conduct. If the group is made up of boys, most of whom have had 
deficient training, the standards of the group as a whole are likely 
to fall far below those of the better boys. 

Next to his need for the right kind of companions, the Junior 
needs live, present-day adult heroes. Whereas earlier the child imi- 
tated the actions of people, he now imitates the qualities that he 
discovers in others. As Weigle says : "Middle childhood imitates 
persons, but not as ideals ; adolescence conceives ideals, but not in 
personal terms. Now ideal and person are inseparable. You can- 
not help a boy or girl of this age by talking of ideals in general 
or in the abstract. You must set before them a hero." 

Would that every Junior boys' class might have a strong, noble 
Christian man to be "hero first and then teacher," and every Junior 
girls' class a woman of like type to serve this same need ! Says 
President King: "No teaching of morals and noble ideals by precept 
is quite equal in effect and influence to the bringing of a surrendered 
personality into touch with a truly noble Christian soul." Hero 
worship there is bound to be ; if the Sunday school fails to provide 
the heroes, some other agency will do so. At its best this instinct 
means the assimilation of high ideals, the emulation of strong char- 
acters, the formation of right habits, the foundation of true and 
noble living; at its worst it means admiration of brute force, de- 
veloping lawlessness, the formation of destructive habits, giving 
license to worst instincts — a life crippled and doomed before it has 



76 THE PUPIL 

been launched under full sail. To be a Junior's hero many things 
are desirable ; a few are positively necessary : you must be able to 
act energetically and strongly; do things, some of them surpassingly 
well ; be master of yourself, your moods, your tempers, and modes 
of expression; be frank and genuine; and know what you attempt 
to teach. 

2. Instruction. — Juniors need to know about God as Creator and 
Ruler, whose supreme activities in the creation and government of 
the universe will compel their admiration and homage. They need 
to know about Jesus Christ, his kingly power and rule, the deeds 
that manifested his power ; how those who accepted him as their 
Master and Leader became capable of deeds of might and heroism — 
men of power and achievement. They need to have clear conceptions 
of right and wrong, to understand the meaning and consequences 
of right and wrong choices, and to realize their personal responsi- 
bility for right choices. They need to know of the presence of sin 
in the world, of its meaning and its effects, and to have an abhor- 
rence of it cultivated. 

The International Graded Lessons, Junior Series, are planned to 
meet the needs of later childhood. The aim for the Junior lessons 
as a whole is : "To help the child to become a doer of the Word, 
and to lead him into conscious loyalty to Jesus Christ." The aims 
for each of the four years of the series are thus stated: 

i. To awaken an interest in the Bible, and love for it; to deepen 
the impulse to choose and to do the right. 

2. To present the ideal of moral heroism; to reveal the power and 
majesty of Jesus Christ, and to show his followers going forth in 
his strength to do his work. 

3. To deepen the sense of responsibility for right choices ; to show 
the consequences of right and wrong choices ; to strengthen love of 
the right and hatred of the wrong. 

4. To present Jesus as our example and Saviour ; to show that 
the Christian life is a life of service; to deepen interest in the Book 
which contains God's message to the world." 

The need of Juniors for a large amount of fact information to 
serve as a background of the Bible stories, enable them to under- 
stand them, and to handle the Bible with ease has led to the pro- 
vision for correlated lessons. These provide for the teaching of 
Bible geography, of the manners and customs of Bible lands, and 
for drill on essential facts. 

The reading interest affords one of the finest opportunities for 
teaching. History in which action is made prominent appeals. The 



LATER CHILDHOOD 77 

literature of hero legend and chivalry is attractive, and it should 
be gleaned for its choicest contributions. The religious teacher 
should be able to guide her pupils to the best in biography, history, 
poetry, and fiction. The discrimination of Juniors is not developed, 
and unless they are given counsel and guidance they will not always 
choose wisely. The injury of bad books is incalculable. All the 
work of the Sunday school for the pupil may be negatived and un- 
done by the reading of a few trashy books. The Sunday-school 
teacher should make it his business to know what books his pupils 
are reading. 

The dramatizing of personal narratives is a valuable form of 
teaching. The Junior loves to play the part of a character whom he 
admires. The educational influence is thus stated by Fiske : "As he 
acts out his part he is learning to mind his imagery, learning to 
realize his ideals and to rehearse them — yes, actually to live them 
out in life. It is not difficult for the child to build the bridge from 
the dramatic rehearsal of right action to the original deed itself. 
The child sees the vision just as really as the deed. The regnant 
imagery once dramatized becomes a standard for conscience." 

The Juniors ability to memorize should be utilized. This is the 
time for him to learn the outstanding facts about the Bible : its 
great divisions, the number and names of the books in each, authors, 
periods of the history, names of prophets and apostles, great chap- 
ters, and other important facts. The memory should be stored 
with the choicest Bible verses. Never again can they be so easily 
learned, and they will wonderfully enrich the religious life. It is 
questioned whether the child should be required to memorize abstract 
doctrinal statements, such as are given in most catechisms, and with 
which his experience has no point of contact. 

Definite tasks for home work should be assigned. Slight assign- 
ments in line with dominant interests may be made at first and then 
gradually increased. The Junior will cheerfully and eagerly do 
things for you as his teacher, if you cause him to feel that he is 
helping you, that he would rebel against if asked to do them as 
''assigned tasks." Honor awards, open to all, will also be found 
to be helpful. By tactful means the faithful doing of the home work 
should be required. To allow boys and girls to neglect their Sunday- 
school studies is a serious mistake. It tends to the development of 
habits that have profound consequences of neglect and indifference 
to religion in later life. Inaccuracy, carelessness, and disorderliness 
now are a preparation for immoral habits later. The child should 
have at least as much respect for his Sunday-school studies as for 



78 THE PUPIL 

his day-school work and should be expected to be just as faithful 
in the preparation of his Sunday-school lessons as in those of the 
week-day. 

3. Training in Worship. — The interests and needs of the period 
demand provision for department worship. The program should 
be planned with these interests and needs definitely in mind. 

The program should make provision for worship in praise, in 
prayer, and in offering. Especial attention should be given to the 
selection of suitable hymns, many of which should be learned and 
sung from memory. Examples of suitable hymns and tunes for 
Juniors are: "Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus," "Onward, Christian 
Soldiers," "Brightly Gleams Our Banner," "It Came Upon the Mid- 
night Clear," "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," "Brightest and Best 
of the Sons of the Morning," "Hark, the Voice of Jesus Calling." 

The religion of Juniors is essentially joyous. There should be 
no effort to produce unnatural religious feelings. The feelings most 
to be desired are the spontaneous joy and gratitude which arise in 
the child's heart as he contemplates the love and care of the heavenly 
Father, and awe and reverence as the sublime majesty and great- 
ness of the Creator come to be more fully understood. Sometimes 
deeply and permanently injurious work has been done in children's 
meetings by working upon the feelings. A child should not be 
encouraged to give public utterance to feelings the genuineness of 
which may be open to question. On the other hand, the teacher 
should encourage the confidences of the pupil, even draw them out 
in conversation. Juniors are naturally reticent in speaking of their 
fears, hopes, anxieties, and aspirations. Not infrequently they have 
secret anxieties which should be relieved. A teacher writes to the 
author : "I remember when a Junior of trying to comprehend eternity 
until I felt my head nearly bursting. I found a book of seven ser- 
mons on the unpardonable sin ; decided I had committed it ; had 
terrible dreams of the devil coming after me; and suffered almost 
intolerable agony." 

4. Training in Christian Conduct and Service. — The unmeas- 
ured energy of the Junior must be expended in right ways because 
habits are constantly being made. Habits are noiv formed more easily 
than at any later period of life and they are likely to be permanent. 
Whatever it is desired to make the practice of life should now be 
made automatic. Church attendance, daily Bible reading, and daily 
prayer should now become habits. If service to others is to be 
placed on the basis of habitual action rather than on chance impulse, 
a beginning should be made now. What the pupil does as messenger, 



LATER CHILDHOOD 79 

usher, assistant secretary, doorkeeper, member of choir or orchestra, 
is not merely a present help to the school ; it is writing the law of 
seryice into his hands, his feet, and his intellect. Many superin- 
tendents and teachers wear themselves out doing little things that 
boys and girls would gladly do for them to their own great profit. 

Service for others in direct personal ways should be systematically 
planned. The things to be done should be discussed in the class and 
the department, and the religious motive for doing them emphasized. 
The pupils should be given opportunity for initiative in making sug- 
gestions and in carrying them out. The giving of money should be 
stressed. The causes to be contributed to should be considered, and 
gifts from the class or department treasury voted by the class. 
Natural interests should be utilized in developing the habit of doing 
things for the church. For example, the collecting interest may be 
utilized in securing pictures for illustration, objects for the mission- 
ary cabinet, or pictures and objects showing Bible manners and 
customs. 

Principles of conduct may be formulated as rules and presented 
to the pupils for their adoption. The Junior's respect for authority 
and his desire to play the game according to the rules will aid in 
making them effective in the formation of moral habits. Plenty 
of opportunity for the practice of right is needed. The more he 
practices right doing, the more the child knows what is right; the 
more he knows and does the right, the clearer and stronger his con- 
science becomes. 

Juniors should be led to make their own decisions. Nothing is 
more important now than right conduct, but the best results are 
seldom obtained by the use of many commands. "The natural re- 
action of a "you shall* is an T won't.' The human animal was not 
made to be driven, and this is one of his glories." The Junior's 
plans and ideas are very dear to him and they do not readily go 
out by force. But these boys and girls are responsive to leadership 
that manifests itself in sympathetic companionship and by that bond 
are easily- led to choose and do the right. Instead of commanding 
it is usually wise clearly to present alternatives ; kindly and good- 
naturedly to explain the reasons for doing the right; and then to 
ask that choice be made. There is little moral training in com- 
pulsion. As exercise of the muscles of the arm results in increased 
strength, so exercise of the will increases its power. Any number 
of moral decisions made for a child by another will not impart moral 
strength to him. He gains in power only by saying "yes" or "no" 
for himself. 



80 THE PUPIL 

The loyalty of the Junior may be made the basis of moral appeal. 
Loyalty is a boy's fundamental virtue. It is deep, genuine, abiding. 
If the teacher actually succeeds in appealing to the pupil's sense 
of honor and loyalty, response is assured. On the other hand, to 
allow a boy to feel that you doubt him or do not respect him is 
to lose influence over him. Judge Lindsey, of the Juvenile Court 
of Denver, explains his success in dealing with delinquent boys by 
the fact that he appeals to their sense of honor and loyalty. He 
makes them feel that his own success is dependent on their keeping 
faith with him. They feel that he believes in them and trusts them; 
they "stand by the Judge." 

5. Results to be Expected. — If the principles we have stated are 
faithfully observed in the teaching and training of Juniors, progress 
in the religious life may be confidently expected. 

The normal course of growth is a gradually deepening religious 
purpose, a more manifest interest in religious subjects and observ- 
ances, and some manifestation of religious feeling. 

With some there may be visible during the period no deeper mani- 
festation of the religious life than conformity to religious observ- 
ances. If the habit of these is well established and the work of in- 
struction has been well done, the inner commitment will surely come 
later. With others there is certain to be a marked deepening of 
religious interest and in many an awakening to a new spiritual con- 
sciousness, bringing with it a new filial sense toward God as Father 
and readily manifesting itself in a personal commitment to the Lord 
Jesus Christ as Friend and Saviour. As a result there will be a 
desire manifested publicly to confess love for the Father and for 
the Saviour by reception into membership in the church. 1 Those in 
whom such a desire prevails should be received and heartily wel- 
comed. It is an exceedingly serious thing to deny admission to 
the church to any boy or girl at any time when a strong desire to 
come into the church exists. The child is sensitive ; rebuff may be 
deeply felt. A little later there will be strong influences pulling in 
the opposite direction ; if refused admission now, he may later turn 
away from the church and eventually from the religious life. Re- 
ception into church membership with appreciation on the part of the 
Junior that it involves a free giving of himself to Jesus Christ and 



1 Of the children in the Sunday schools of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
as well as a number of other churches, many have been baptized in infancy. 
If the best traditions of the church have been adhered to, they are recorded 
and recognized as probationary members of the church. If this is the case, they 
should now be received into full membership. 



LATER CHILDHOOD 81 

a fuller acceptance of his leadership is most excellent preparation 
for the storms and struggles of early adolescence. Making allow- 
ance for exceptional circumstances and cases, the members of the 
Junior Department should be expected to unite with the church be- 
fore passing on to the Intermediate Department. 

A habit of prayer should exist. Often the prayer may be offered 
in a perfunctory way, but the habit is in itself important. "Habitual 
prayer to God is the starting point of spiritual religion.'* Not in- 
frequently there may be during the period the awakening of some- 
thing of spontaneous interest in prayer. 

Boys and girls of Junior age should not be expected often to 
give expression to religious feeling. They have not learned to ex- 
press their religious feelings. Though they have a genuine love 
for the heavenly Father, they will not naturally say much about it. 
The religion of this age is not introspective. They should not be 
unduly urged, for urging may easily lead to insincerity. Above all 
else we must cherish genuineness ; for any expression to be made 
that is not genuine has an injurious effect upon character. They 
should be expected to express interest in kindly ministries and in 
doing things for church and school. 

The child who has been taught from infancy that he is God's 
child and who has come to think of himself as a Christian should 
not now be urged to repent and turn to God as adults are exhorted 
to do. Such a course is contradictory, and the child will not fail 
to see the contradiction. It is sure to cause confusion and it is 
likely to make him question the teaching of the past. He has no 
sinful past, such as the adult has, from which a radical break is 
required. 

"We are not to expect the boy to have his grandfather's religion," 
declared Henry Drummond. No more are we to expect the girl to 
have her grandmother's religion. We may expect both boy and girl 
to have a religion of their own, to live a child's religious life in a 
child's way. To lead them to do this is the teacher's task. Such a 
religion we may be very sure is acceptable to God and to Jesus Christ. 

II. CONSTRUCTIVE TASK 

i. Take for comparison a boy or girl of ten or eleven with 
whom you are intimately acquainted: To what extent does 
the characterization of the Junior in this chapter fit? 
Wherein is it inadequate? Wherein is it overdrawn? 

2. What do you consider to be the most important ele- 



82 THE PUPIL 

ments of opportunity in the religious teaching and training 
of Junior children? 

3. Prepare a constructive statement on the teaching in a 
particular Junior class you know about, applying such tests 
as these: Are the pupils becoming acquainted with their 
Bibles? Do they locate references easily? Do they do les- 
son work at home? What great Bible passages have they 
memorized? How many of the great hymns do they know? 
Are they forming habits of service? What proportion of 
them have united with the church ? 

III. MEMORY ASSIGNMENT 

"Blessings on thee, little man, 
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! 
With thy turned-up pantaloons, 
And thy merry whistled tunes ; 

"Oh, for boyhood's painless play, 
Sleep that wakes in laughing day, 
Health that mocks the doctor's rules, 
Knowledge never learned of schools !" 

—John G. Whittier. 

IV. REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

In the Library 

1. Characteristics of the Junior: Youth, Hall, p. iff. 

2. Development of the individualistic instinct: Fundamentals of Child 

Study, Kirkpatrick, Chap. VI. 



CHAPTER IX 

EARLY YOUTH 

I. LESSON STATEMENT 

The years from twelve to fourteen are among the most fateful 
of all the years of life. They are transition years. They intervene 
between two lands singularly different. On one side lies the fair 
field of childhood, bright with flowers, singing brooks, and culti- 
vated gardens ; peopled with fairies and elves and children at play 
and men and women who do great, brave deeds. On the other side 
is a land of hills and valleys. There are precipices and ravines 
leading away to places of darkness. There are streams, some broad 
and clear as crystal, others dark and turbid, with dangerous rapids, 
hidden rocks, and eddying whirlpools. There are gardens here also 
with flowers, and cultivated fields, and uplands stretching away to 
the eternal hills. On the one side of these transition years is 
childhood ; on the other, youth. 

Another term for youth is much used by scientific writers and by 
speakers at conventions — adolescence. Youth, or adolescence, con- 
tinues for about twelve years, from twelve to twenty-four. We 
speak of the years twelve to fourteen as early adolescence; fifteen 
to seventeen as middle adolescence; and eighteen to twenty-four 
as later adolescence. Corresponding to early adolescence, we have 
the Intermediate Department of the Sunday school. 

The entire period of adolescence is of intense interest to all who 
are concerned with the nurture of life and the building of character. 
Many will agree with the statement of G. Stanley Hall : "The ado- 
lescent stage of life has long seemed to me one of the most fascinat- 
ing of all themes, more worthy, perhaps, than anything else in the 
world of reverence, most inviting study, and in most crying need of 
a service we do not yet understand how to render aright." 

While for convenience of reference we shall study separately the 
three so-called periods of adolescence, it should be realized that 
here again, as in childhood, there are no sharply divided periods, 
no dividing lines marking transitions or abrupt shifts from one 
state of development to another. One period fades into another 

83 



84 THE PUPIL 

by a series of minute, complex variations. Two other considera- 
tions emphasize the fact that the idea of distinct periods is a fallacy. 
The first is that in his development every individual is in a meas- 
ure a law unto himself. "Individual studies only can give a true 
picture of individual development." The second is that there is an 
average difference of from one to two years in the physiological age 
of boys and girls. 

i. THE INTERMEDIATE 

i. Body. — Usually at about twelve or thirteen there is a sudden 
increase in the rate of physical growth. There is likely to be a more 
rapid growth of the whole body than has taken place since infancy. 
Arms and legs stretch out at what seems an amazing rate. The bones 
enlarge. Some of the most important organs, notably the lungs and 
heart, increase in size. The arteries become one third larger. The 
vital forces of the body are intensified. All these physical changes 
are intimately related to the most important bodily development be- 
tween birth and death — the maturing of the sex function, or puberty. 
The average age for girls is twelve to thirteen ; for boys, thirteen 
and one half to fourteen and one half, although it may be delayed 
for a year or more beyond this age. Self-consciousness is more 
marked. The senses are more acute than earlier, and new sensations 
are experienced. Imperfect coordination, due to the rapid growth 
and to unequal rate of growth of bones and muscles, results in 
clumsiness and awkwardness. Changes in the vocal cords produce 
the "change of voice," so frequent a cause of embarrassment to 
boys. Sensitiveness and embarrassment of both boys and girls is 
intensified by thoughtless and unfeeling remarks of older persons 
concerning "overgrown children," "members of the awkward squad," 
and especially by references to their personal appearance. 

2. Mind. — The period is one of unusual mental expansion. 

a. The intellect is quickened. New interests are likely to emerge. 
Not infrequently the "hobby" or "craze" that now suddenly develops 
persists and becomes a permanent life interest. There may be an 
increase of interest in reading or study or, on the contrary, a new 
impatience with books and a strong desire for constructive activity, 
manifesting itself in the wish to leave school and go to work. 
Biography is attractive, especially the life histories of the heroes 
of achievement. The Intermediate manifests a new disposition to 
think things out for himself and to demand of authority reasons 
that satisfy his mind. The imagination is busied in picturing future 
possibilities. Dreaming of the days to come, or "longing," as it is 



EARLY YOUTH 85 

sometimes called, is an outstanding mental characteristic of this 
period. In "idle day dreams" the boy or girl may be creating a career 
in imagination that in future years will both astonish and bless the 
world. 

b. The feelings become deeper and more intense. The whole 
emotional life is deepened and strengthened. During the years of 
early and middle adolescence the emotions have their most rapid, 
widest and deepest development. During the period of puberty the 
feelings are especially intense and varied. A boy writes, ''About 
thirteen I had feelings too deep for me to express." Many would 
bear similar testimony. This is the "storm and stress" period of 
life. The stolidity and callousness which seem so characteristic of 
these years are apparent rather than real. The desires, the longings, 
the joys, the sorrows, the high hopes, the sudden disappointments, 
the inner strivings and searchings of heart that crowd tumultuously 
one upon the other, are for the most part studiously concealed. This 
tendency to conceal the real feelings is said by Irving King to be 
"largely a protective measure, almost instinctive." The adolescent 
has a dread of seeming weak or sentimental. 

The emotions are subject to ebb and flow. There is likely to be 
despondency, sometimes very strong, varied by spells of elation. 
Unsteadiness, restlessness, and wavering may be expected. One who 
at times is very religious may at other times seem frivolous and 
almost giddy. One w T ho is open-hearted and generous may at times 
seem extremely selfish. 

Of new emotions perhaps synnpathy may be most confidently 
expected. The little child may exhibit feelings that resemble sym- 
pathy, but there is now a new capacity to share life, to enter into 
the joys and sorrows of others, which makes real sympathy now 
possible. A whole group of feelings of religious significance are 
related to and in a measure grow out of sympathy — among them pity, 
compassion, gratitude, and benevolence. There is also a new sensi- 
tiveness concerning the favor and opinions of others. Praise never 
before was so stimulating, so much enjoyed; embarrassment and 
shame never so deeply felt. The sense of sin aw T akens during these 
years, or, if there has been some realization of sin and guilt earlier, 
it may now be expected to be deepened. 

c. The will receives a nezv infusion of strength and craves expres- 
sion. The Intermediate is no longer satisfied to have his decisions 
made for him by another. . His will now must assert itself. Like 
the emotions, the will is almost certain to be unstable during these 
years. One who is genuinely devoted to the moral ideals that have 



86 THE PUPIL 

been inculcated by home and school may at times show strange 
contradictions in conduct. He may even exhibit delight in breaking 
through the restrictions by which he is hedged about. But these 
occasional outbreaks are hardly more than experiments or adven- 
tures of the will and are not to be regarded too seriously. "Almost 
any kind of conduct is possible during this frequently chaotic period 
in moral and volitional development," says Kirkpatrick, "without 
producing permanent effects upon character. " Self-will and com- 
bativeness seem to develop more rapidly than self-reliance and moral 
responsibility, and this may be an additional explanation of lack 
of moral balance. 

3. Distinguishing Characteristics. — What traits may we expect 
to see exhibited in the conduct of boys and girls of twelve to four- 
teen? What qualities are likely to stand out most prominently? 

a. Physical energy abounds and mast find channels of expression. 
The superabundant energy of the preceding years is still in evidence, 
more especially in the case of boys. There is much boisterousness 
and noisiness. Doors are slammed, requests are shouted, books are 
thrown down violently on the table, and chairs are shunted about 
like freight cars on a sidetrack. Games that require the maximum 
of running are most in favor. 

b. Variability and contradictions in conduct are constantly in evi- 
dence. The period is one of ferment; the "yeasty period" it is 
sometimes called. The habits of childhood are being broken up, 
and permanent habits are not yet formed. Both boys and girls 
are almost sure to act frequently on sudden impulse. The boy may 
be an entirely different being by turns — kind, gentle, and tractable 
for a time, and then cruel, harsh, and disobedient. Under sudden 
impulse he may commit some lawless act that later he will regret 
quite as keenly as parent or teacher. Or he may appear at times 
self-conscious and bashful, shy and reticent, and at other times 
exhibit a spirit of braggadocio and forwardness. Somewhat similar 
contradictions may be expected in the girl. She is now governed 
more by impulse and by intuition than by reason. Often no more 
satisfactory explanation of some strange act can be obtained than 
"I just wanted to do it." The wish to be personally attractive now 
becomes ardent desire, and increased thought and attention are 
given to dress and other details of personal appearance. She who 
has been a serious child may now exhibit strange coyness and 
coquetry. Contending forces battle within the heart of both boy 
and girl ; sharp contrasts and conflicts are to be expected. 

c. A new spirit of independence is exhibited. The docility and 



EARLY YOUTH 87 

easy obedience to rules of the preceding years are gone. There is 
a fnarked restiveness under restraint and, in all likelihood, occasional 
open rebellion against authority. "At fourteen/' writes a young man, 
"I had great desire to break all rules of school simply because they 
were rules." There is also a marked decrease of fear of authority. 
The tendency is for the new spirit of independence and the de- 
creased respect for authority to result in lawlessness. Sixteen boys 
of twelve to fourteen, whose homes were in one of the better 
residential districts of Cincinnati, confessed in the juvenile court 
having committed more than a dozen burglaries besides minor thefts 
in the neighborhood of their homes. Many similar cases occur. But 
this characteristic is not wholly a moral liability. Personal initiative 
and a new spirit of courage are a part of it. A schoolboy of four- 
teen plunged into a canal and brought to the bank the body of a boy 
aged six and for two hours worked vigorously and intelligently 
trying to resuscitate him. 

Parental restraints previously respected if harshly or abitrarily 
enforced are now likely to result in a serious break between child 
and parent. A sad thing is that parents so often regard this new 
attitude as childish rebellion against authority, whereas it is the in- 
dependence of manhood beginning to assert itself — youth coming 
into the realization of its right to make its own decisions and to 
live its own life. 

d. A marked development of the social instinct is to be noted. 
The new world of the adolescent is a world of persons. Childhood 
is naturally the egoistic period of life; adolescence is the social 
period. During these early years there comes the first social awaken- 
ing. Often a first evidence is a new sensitiveness to the opinions 
and the respect of other members of the group. The boy begins 
to consider whether his conduct is acceptable to "the fellows" ; the 
girl to ask herself, "I wonder what the girls think about me/' 

Most boys and girls of twelve do not care for one another's com- 
pany. There seems to be something antagonistic between them — 
sex repulsion, it is called. Before the end of the period there is a 
change, and the sexes begin to be mutually attracted. 

At about the beginning of the period, as a result of the develop- 
ing social instinct, there is a marked tendency to form gangs and 
cliques. Unless they are already members of some organization 
that meets their needs, boys organize spontaneous gangs of their 
own. Girls* spontaneous groups are smaller than those of boys, 
often consisting of only three or four girls. In a canvass of the 
Hyde Park district of Chicago Hoben found an average of one 



88 THE PUPIL 

gang to every two blocks. He estimates that eighty per cent of all 
boys twelve to fifteen belong to some form of boys' gang. 1 There 
is no stronger demand during these years than this for group organi- 
zation that will provide opportunities for physical activities. 

The instinctive cohesion of the gang now leads for the first time 
to real team play. The boy's interest is no longer solely in his own 
success; he wants his side to win, that honor may come to the 
gang. This feeling grows until a sacrifice hit comes to be a genuine 
joy. 

4. Summary. — The Intermediate has left childhood behind and 
has not yet found himself a youth. He is in process of change. 
He cannot at once organize his new experiences or adjust himself 
to new conditions. Deep, strong impulses are taking form within 
him. The great passions and controlling ambitions are awakening. 
The spirit of heroism is coming to birth. The social instinct is 
developing and taking definite form. There is a craving for adven- 
ture and an accompanying daring which scorns risk and danger. 

While the Intermediate tries and puzzles all who are interested 
in him, it should also be remembered that it is a more trying and 
puzzling time for him than for his parents and teachers. He does 
not understand himself. His impulsive conduct is a puzzle to his 
own mind. Added to this is the vexatious realization that he is not 
understood or is misunderstood by his elders. In truth, he is the 
least understood, least sympathized with, and most harshly criticized 
member of the human family. The lack of success in religious work 
with boys and girls has been largely due to this fact. It has not 
been entirely due to indifference and inertia ; the Sunday school has 
not known what to do with and for the Intermediate. A compelling 
need is that we should study to know him and to understand him, 
that we may deal sympathetically and intelligently with him. 

2. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE INTERMEDIATE 

It is significant that the importance of the Intermediate years for 
religion has been universally recognized. With primitive savage 
tribes this was the age when by special religious rites the youth was 
initiated into the full fellowship of the tribe. In the churches that 
observe confirmation this is the age at which boys and girls are 
confirmed. Without question there is sound psychological basis for 
these customs. The conditions in the life are now right for such a 
response to the call of religion as was not possible earlier. The 



l The Minister and the Boy, pp. 22 ft. 



EARLY YOUTH 89 

great deeps of the whole nature are stirred; there is beginning to 
be a hunger and thirst for the satisfactions of religion. 

1. Environment.— The Intermediate needs comradeship above all 
else. Both boys and girls crave it. Companionship they must have. 
They are highly susceptible to influence. The boy thinks himself 
almost a man, the girl considers herself a young woman ; but they 
have neither the maturity of judgment nor experience to decide for 
themselves the great issues of life. They cannot be expected to 
show the childish dependence on others that characterized their 
younger years, but never before have they so greatly needed to be 
girded about with the silent strength of other lives brought into 
close fellowship with their own. They will not ask advice nor 
assistance, nor will they allow another to make their decisions. But 
if a teacher has their confidence and lives before them the decisions 
he wants them to make, they will choose rightly. 

Above all, Intermediates need the comradeship during these years 
of the ever-present Friend. It should be borne in upon them that 
personal association with Christ is a certain source of inspiration, 
encouragement, and strength. 

Right associations are of the utmost importance. The new regard 
for the opinion of companions, sensitiveness to the ridicule of other 
members of the group, the spirit of adventure and desire for new 
experiences, are likely to overcome the influence of earlier teaching 
and training and lead to the breaking down of moral restraints if 
associates are immoral and wild. 

2. Instruction. — The reading interests of Intermediates center in 
adventure, achievement and heroism. They crave accounts of dar- 
ing exploits, of courageous and heroic living. They have little use 
for the recluse, the devotee, and the traditional saint. They admire 
the pioneer, the soldier, the inventor — the one in any walk of life 
who has achieved greatly. Peril, hardship, struggle, endurance, wis- 
dom, and exciting adventure all appeal strongly. These are the 
qualities that enter into the makeup of the hero as defined by pupils 
of this age, and the age is still one of hero worship. 

In our search for lesson material that will appeal to Intermediates 
and awaken a response in their natures we must take these interests 
into account. It is evident that the life stories of the moral and 
religious heroes of the race should be selected. There are various 
forms of biography, and not all biography will appeal to Inter- 
mediates. If the biographies of the religious pioneers and heroes 
of the ages be presented in bold, rugged outline, their adventures 
and achievements attractively related, the dominating motives and 



go THE PUPIL 

purposes of their lives revealed without preaching, we may be 
confident that a response will be awakened, that moral principles 
latent in the mind will be vitalized, and that Christian ideals will be 
strengthened and made more definite. 

Among the characters to be studied during these years the life 
and character of the supreme Hero of the race, Jesus Christ, should 
be given first place. The life of Jesus should be presented in bold 
outline, no attempt being made to acquaint the pupils with all the 
incidents of the gospel history. Rather, those events should be 
selected in which action abounds and in which the power of Jesus 
is revealed. The love of Jesus for men, service as the motive of 
his life, his devotion to the will and purposes of the Father, the 
unflinching courage with which he faced rejection, condemnation, 
and crucifixion rather than be untrue to his high purposes and the 
will of the Father, and, finally, that his was a sacrificial death — 
these are the features of the great life story that should be made 
to stand out clear and strong. 

The International Graded Lessons provide just such material as 
has been described. The aim of the Intermediate Graded Course 
is stated: "To lead to the practical recognition of the duty and 
responsibility of personal Christian living, and to organize the con- 
flicting impulses of life so as to develop habits of Christian service." 
The subjects are: for the twelfth year, "Gospel Stories"; for the 
thirteenth, "Leaders of Israel" ; for the fourteenth, "Christian 
Leaders." 

The importance of sex instruction should be realized. These are 
the years in which, because of the new development of the physical 
powers, the moral perils that have their basis in sex become acute. 
Habits of personal impurity that wreck the moral life are most 
likely to be formed in these years. Sex instruction should be given 
during the earlier years and also in this period by parents ; but 
nothing is more often neglected by them. The teacher who has the 
confidence of his pupils can readily discover whether parents have 
given necessary information and counsel. Sex instruction requires 
wise, tactful, and delicate teaching. There should be no false 
prudery, nor should there be an unnecessary amount of information 
given. A teacher who has had guidance through w r ell-chosen litera- 
ture may talk with the pupils individually and as a group, or a 
Christian physician may be asked to give one or more talks to the 
class. 

These years register a marked increase in ability to learn, For 
most pupils they are the junior-high-school years. In the public 



EARLY YOUTH 91 

schools more is required in lesson preparation than earlier, and a 
steady advance in knowledge and in power of thought is registered. 
Possibly there is slight decrease in the power of exact word repro- 
duction ; otherwise the ability to memorize is unchanged. Memoriz- 
ing should be continued, emphasis being now placed upon memory 
wholes — choice paragraphs and chapters rather than single verses. 

Tactful, firm insistence should be placed on the necessity of les- 
son preparation. The Sunday school is entitled to a fair share of 
the pupil's time 'for religious education. Parents and pupils alike 
should understand that it is not right for public school tasks and 
social pleasures to crowd out home preparation of the Sunday-school 
lesson. In most classes coming up through the Junior Graded 
Courses the necessity of lesson preparation will be assumed ; in all 
others a conscience on the matter should be gradually built up. 

In these grades, as earlier, there can be no effective teaching with- 
out active interest and response. Pupils should be expected to 
participate in discussion of the lesson. The asking of questions 
should be encouraged. Required expressional work should include 
map drawing, the keeping of notebooks, and the v/riting of essays 
and reports on lesson topics. 

3. Training in Worship. — For training in worship during these 
years a separate room in which Intermediates, or, at most, Inter- 
mediates and Seniors, may have a program of their own is desirable. 
Pupils of this age will take little part and derive slight benefit from 
a mass assembly in which younger children and adults participate. 
Nothing is more common in the Sunday school in which all grades 
meet together than groups of boys and girls of Intermediate age 
who take no part in the service, singing with indifferent interest 
or not at all, failing to take part in the responses, and gazing about 
the room or even whispering during the prayer. This, too, is a form 
of training, training in irreverence and irreligiousness. 

Department worship appeals to the group instinct of Intermediates. 
It provides opportunity for group expression and team-work. Such 
a service should provide a place for class prayers, for the group 
recitation of memorized passages of Scripture, and for responsive 
readings by classes as well as by the department as a whole. The 
class, guided by the teacher, may compose several class prayers that 
will voice the ideals and religious aspirations of the group and 
thus provide a means of giving expression to the group conscious- 
ness. Choice ritual prayers should be used in a limited way, for the 
same reason and for the value they have in aiding individual ex- 
pression. 



92 THE PUPIL 

Group worship is not enough. During these years a new meaning 
and content should be given to individual worship. The danger is 
that the prayers of childhood will now seem childish and outgrown, 
and that the early habit of morning and evening prayer will be 
neglected. The importance of daily prayer and Bible reading should 
be emphasized in class discussions. The teacher should also talk 
personally with each member of the class on this subject. The daily 
readings may be based upon the lesson. If this is not done, some 
other systematic plan should be used. Each pupil should have his 
own pocket Bible. 

The devotional period of the class meeting will provide the best 
opportunity for the beginning of voluntary prayer. With encourage- 
ment, the more earnest pupils will readily respond. Those who are 
backward, either because of self-consciousness or semi-indifference, 
will be helped by a quiet personal talk leading up to prayer first 
by the teacher and then by the pupils. Before the pupils are asked 
to offer prayer, it will be desirable sometimes for the teacher to dis- 
cuss in an informal way the meaning and form of prayer, occasion- 
ally raising such a question as "What should we thank God for 
and what things should we pray for to-day?" 

It is not to be expected that Intermediate boys and girls will be 
fluent in the expression of their religious emotions. There is some 
peril in overmuch expression. Public testimony seldom should be 
urged. A heart-to-heart talk in the classroom, out on the hillside, 
on the beach, or about the camp fire, in which the deep things of 
life are talked about in a free and informal but serious way, will 
provide the finest kind of opportunity for genuine emotional expres- 
sion, the influence of which will long abide. 

4. Training in Christian Conduct and Service. — All conduct in 
these years that is morally significant must be self-initiated. The 
impulse must come from within. Moral conduct cannot be imposed 
upon the pupil or nagged into him. Conduct having the semblance 
of goodness that is the result of constraint or coercion is without a 
vital root. The time has passed when compulsory obedience con- 
tributes to the building of character. Prizes, rewards, and all forms 
of buying right conduct are valueless. Coddling and nagging are 
weakening and positively harmful. The change must now be made 
from external to internal control. Motives and ideals within, latent 
and hidden though they may be, should be appealed to r as our re- 
liance must now be upon them. This is a hard lesson for teachers 
to learn, and still harder for parents. It seems natural to think 
of these boys and girls as irresponsible children and to enforce one's 



EARLY YOUTH 93 

will upon them by the exercise of authority. But the pupil's will has 
now come to the point of self-assertion. Compulsion awakens inner 
protest, which with some may take the form of defiance and often 
rebellion ; with others a secret revulsion both against the one who 
enforces authority and against the standard to which conformity is 
enforced. If the will is ever to become an adequate agency for 
the self-determination of conduct, capable of high resolve and of 
execution against great odds, it must now begin to be self-exercised. 
To fail to develop in boys and girls a sense of responsibility for 
making their own choices and to fail to give them actual opportunity 
for making their own decisions is a serious error. Very often 
parents and teachers insist upon making decisions for boys and girls 
when they should be guiding them in self-direction. Often the 
guidance must be indirect; a direct suggestion will be resented. 

It is to be recognized that in moral training there are few princi- 
ples that are of universal application. Each pupil must be studied 
to be understood. There are almost as many types of will as there 
are boys. Precisely the same methods cannot be used with all. 

The new feelings that appear during these years must be utilized 
if they are to be strengthened and made parmanent. When sym- 
pathy manifests itself, the teacher's question should be, "How will 
you show your sympathy?" If the pupil or the class do not know 
of a practical way, the teacher should suggest a plan and make its 
execution possible. To fail to find an expression in action for the 
budding altruistic feelings is to stifle their life. If feelings that 
should normally appear at this time seem to be absent, bring about 
actions that are their natural expression, and it is almost certain 
that the feelings will follow. Here again the importance of example 
must be urged. "Nothing is more contagious than a feeling." The 
teacher whose moral sentiments and religious feelings are strong 
and deep will have the satisfaction of seeing them reproducing them- 
selves in his pupils. 

The significance of the gang spirit for' the growth of social conduct 
and for character development can scarcely be overestimated. When 
the Intermediate begins to count self-glory and personal achievement 
as nothing that he may help his side to win — that is, in essence, that 
he may help others — a distinctively Christian element enters into his 
conduct. Every possible chance to capitalize the pupil's readiness to 
act sacrificially for the welfare of the group should be eagerly seized. 
Effort should be made gradually to enlarge the group in the thought 
and feeling of the pupil until it embraces the community, the church, 
and the world. 



94 THE PUPIL 

Loyalty is one of the deepest things in life at this age. It is 
largely an outgrowth of the new social instinct. The teacher may 
be confident that there is a basis of loyalty in every pupil to which 
appeal can be made in behalf of the ideals and the forms of conduct 
for which the class stands and for which he as teacher stands. 
During a period of eight years Judge Lindsey put five hundred and 
seven boys upon their honor to go unaccompanied from Denver to 
the Industrial School at Golden, to which they had been sentenced 
by the court, and of this number all but five were true to the trust 
placed in them. 

The Christian life should be interpreted in terms of personal 
loyalty to Jesus Christ. The teacher who succeeds in attaching the 
loyalty of the pupil to Christ as our great Leader and Saviour is 
building a sure foundation for Christian character. 

Organised play has a rightful place in the activities of the Sunday 
school because of its moral values. Team games, such as baseball, 
basketball, and football, are most favored by Intermediates. Class 
teams or department teams should be formed, and interclass or in- 
terschool games arranged. Hikes and camping trips have a strong 
appeal and offer opportunities of developing the feeling of friend- 
liness and fellowship. Various forms of athletics may be arranged 
when a gymnasium is available. In addition to their positive values 
games and athletics provide a healthful outlet for physical energy 
which otherwise is very likely to be misdirected. 

The importance of training in service is now greatly increased. 
The development of the social instinct brings the beginnings of 
altruism ; the social feelings — notably sympathy, as we have seen — 
are awakening; a new and deeper desire for the common good is 
coming to birth. This signifies opportunity for awakening interest 
in religion as service and for laying the foundation in habit for a 
life of service. Pupils should be encouraged to suggest acts of per- 
sonal service and forms of class service. In this, again, the princi- 
ple of personal initiative is important. But little value is likely to 
attach to any plan taken over by the teacher from some readymade 
scheme. Suggestions made by members of the class may be dis- 
cussed, decisions arrived at, and plans for carrying them t)ut de- 
veloped. Throughout the teacher should act as a guide or counselor, 
leaving everything to the pupils themselves except when some mani- 
festly unwise course is proposed. Opportunities for service within 
the church and Sunday school should be created in sufficient number 
for all of the pupils to have at least occasionally some definite re- 
sponsibility. The distribution of the class offerings should be dis- 



EARLY YOUTH 95 

cussed, and some definite proportion allotted to one or more causes 
selected by the pupils. 
5, Results to be Expected. — 

a. Forms of religions experience. — These years are religious years, 
and our Intermediates have a religious life. It is absolutely essential 
for work of the largest fruitfulness that this should be recognized. 
Little children, it is agreed, are religious. Jesus Christ recognized 
them as members of his kingdom. Unless they have by definite 
conscious acts broken with the religion of childhood, our Intermedi- 
ate pupils are also religious. They may be impulsive, boisterous, 
impatient of restraint, and they may seem disinterested and unre- 
sponsive; yet they have within them that grace of God given to 
every child. 

Intermediates are not perfect Christians. They usually come far 
short of what adult Christians ought to be. They are not yet adults ; 
they are coming into adulthood. So also, under proper influence and 
instruction, they will come into fuller religious consciousness, clearer , 
realization of their life with God, and a more perfect service of 
God and their fellow men. 

In adolescence, as a result of personal choice, religion becomes a 
personal experience. At some time between eleven and eighteen 
there should be a definite commitment and a public acknowledg- 
ment of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. The spiritual awaken- 
ing leading up to this need not involve a distinct break with the 
past. Normally, it ought not. It should come in the process of 
growth, as a development of the religion already present in the life. 
Thus it will be a ratification, not a reversal. It will be the grateful 
acceptance by full, free personal choice of the grace of God bestowed 
upon childhood. It may be accompanied by more or less emotional 
upheaval, or it may be a deliberate, quiet decision, without visible 
emotion. The teacher who tactfully, sympathetically, and devotedly 
aids this choice is the one who is to be credited with "bringing 
these boys and girls to Christ." "Is this, then, 'conversion'?" some 
one is likely to ask. If conversion is to be limited in its meaning — 
as, unfortunately, it is sometimes limited — to reversal of will, to a 
revolutionary and highly emotional experience, to a radical change 
from conscious sin and alienation from God to obedience and favor 
— no. If conversion is to be thought of in a broader sense — includ- 
ing ratification of the religion of childhood by the newly realized 
personal will, the free choice of the ideals and habits that have been 
taught by the church during childhood, and as an experience that 
may be essentially one of spiritual illumination or awakening — yes. 



96 THE PUPIL 

The significance of conversion is in its results : namely, establishing 
the life of God consciously in the soul. 

We should not expect the development of the religious, life to 
proceed in exactly the same way in every case. There are as many 
"varieties of religious experience" as of temperament, disposition, 
and child training. We must seek our clue in the individual 'with 
whom we are dealing and endeavor to develop him according to the 
God-given law of his own nature. 

Sometimes among Intermediate boys and girls we may find those 
who before coming into the department willfully and deliberately 
turned against God. There are some rebels even among children. 
By unfortunate associations, by the example and influence of un- 
godly older people, their hearts were hardened. Of these there 
must be demanded the submission always to be required of rebels. 
But we must be very careful not to impute rebellion where it does 
not exist. Also we must realize and beware of the subtle power of 
suggestion. The religious life of many a child has been ruined by 
the repeated suggestion that he was "bad," "sinful," and "not a 
Christian." We can help boys and girls more by making them feel 
that we believe in them and in their desire to be what they ought 
to be, than in almost any other way. 

b. Registering the new and deeper purpose. — As suggested above 
there should be some open public expression during the Intermediate 
years of the free, personal decision to love and serve God through- 
out life. This decision should be regarded and expected as a natural 
expression of the spiritual awakening of these years. It is necessary 
that proper opportunities for such expression be afforded at the 
opportune time. The Intermediate will not be likely to make them 
for himself. The teacher, the pastor, and the parent should consult 
together and cooperate in securing the form of expression agreed 
upon as desirable in the case of each pupil. Decision is not to be 
forced ; on the other hand, evidences of spiritual awakening should 
be eagerly looked for, and earnest, faithful, tactful means of secur- 
ing decision should be used in order that the dedication of life shall 
be made and registered before these years are past. For boys or 
girls to be allowed to pass through these years without a personal 
religious appeal being made to them is a tragedy. If the pupil has 
not come into the church during the Junior years, it should be con- 
fidently expected that he will now respond to the invitation to 
unite with the church as one means of expressing his deeper, freer, 
more vital religious life and as a profession of his purpose to live 
for God and men. 



EARLY YOUTH 97 

6. The Situation and Its Challenge. — 

a. A complicated problem. —In the very nature of the case we 
rnubt expect difficulties in our religious work with Intermediates. 
Unless it is realized that the work is complicated and intricate, 
disappointment and discouragement are certain. It must not be- 
thought strange if we find the Intermediate vacillating, odd, and 
ofttimes disappointing. He is often a puzzle to himself. 

We should frankly face the fact that in the complicated and diffi- 
cult problem of work with adolescents the Sunday school in the past 
has not been thoroughly successful. The plain fact is that the Sun- 
day schools lose annually many thousands of boys and girls of the 
early and middle teen years. It is almost an average situation for 
a Sunday school to lose during the first tjiree of the "teen" years 
from one half to two thirds of the boys promoted from the Junior 
Department. In a business concern such results w r ould mean 
bankruptcy. 

The reason for this deplorable situation, let it be said, is not so 
much the difficulty of the problem as it is the inattention, inefficiency, 
and neglect that have characterized the church's attitude toward it. 
Just here is our most serious and most important evangelistic prob- 
lem. It is a serious thing that we are not able to win the man on 
the outside, but it is far more serious that we do not succeed in 
holding the boy who is on the inside. Common sense tells us that 
it is far more important to keep what we have than to strive ever 
so wildly to get what we do not have. It is a far greater thing to 
know how to build a strong new vessel that will breast all waves 
than it is to be skilled in patching up an old derelict enough to get 
it into port afloat. The kingdom of Christ will profit far more by 
the life service of stalwart young volunteers than by the feeble 
efforts of broken adults rescued from the depths. There are time, 
place, and adequate energy for every kind of evangelism. "These 
ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone." 
The rebuke that comes to us is that after more than half a century 
the declaration of Matthew Simpson is yet true: The church by its 
neglect of childhood loses more people to the kingdom of God than 
all our revivals are able to bring back. 

b. The challenge. — The complicated nature of the problem, to- 
gether with its difficulty and its importance, constitutes its chal- 
lenge to Christian workers. The task is difficult, but it is not im- 
possible. Over against the failure of many Sunday schools should 
be placed the success of others that have succeeded in holding to 
the school and the church, winning to discipleship, and training in 



98 THE PUPIL 

service more than ninety per cent of their boys and girls. Many 
teachers, both men and women, by devotion, tact, intelligence, sym- 
pathy, and skill, have had remarkable success in work with Inter- 
mediates. It is a service that makes stern demands, but it offers 
rare joy and high privilege to those who meet its requirements. "The 
teachers shall shine as the brightness of the firmament ; and they 
that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever." 1 

II. CONSTRUCTIVE TASK 

i. If not too far removed from your own early youth for 
memory to be distinct, write a brief statement on your own 
inner life during the years twelve to fourteen, noting corre- 
spondences with and divergences from the characterization 
given in this chapter. 

2. Make a thoughtful study of one or more boys or girls 
of Intermediate age whom you know well. Talk freely 
with them about their inner lives, but do not pry into their 
secrets. Respect their sensitiveness. Write a statement 
on the results of your study without revealing the names 
of those about whom you write. 

3. Study the work of the Sunday school you know best. 
Make a careful examination of the records covering, if 
possible, a five-year period. How many of the eleven- and 
twelve-year-old pupils on the record at the beginning of 
this period were in the Sunday school at the end of the five 
years? How many came into the church? 

4. Write briefly on the following: 

a. What is the special importance of comradeship be- 
tween teacher and pupil during these years ? 

b. What are the advantages of the graded lessons for 
Intermediates ? 

c. The kinds of expressional activities necessary in the 
religious education of Intermediates. Why are they neces- 
sary? 

III. MEMORY ASSIGNMENT 

"When I was a beggarly boy 
And lived in a cellar damp, 
I had not a friend or a toy, 
But I had Aladdin's lamp ; 



1 Dan. 12. 3 (American Standard Version, marginal reading). 



EARLY YOUTH 99 

When I could not sleep for the cold, 
I had fire enough in my brain, 
And builded, with roofs of gold, 
My beautiful castles in Spain ! 

"Since then I have toiled day and night. 
I have money and power good store. 
But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright 
For the one that is mine no more ; 
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose, 
You gave, and may snatch again ; 
I have nothing 't would pain me to lose, 
For I own no more castles in Spain." 

— James Russell Lowell. 

IV. REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

In the. Library 

1. The general character of adolescence: Pedagogical Bible School, Has- 

lett, pp. 137-153. 

2. By-laws of boy life: The Boy Problem, Forbush, Chap. II. 

3. Problems of religious and moral education: Girlhood and Character, 

Moxcey, Chap. VIII. 

4. Will training: Boy Life and Self -Government , Fiske, Chap. V. 

5. Training in worship: The Training of the Devotional Life, Kennedy- 

Meyer, Chap. XI. 



CHAPTER X 

MIDDLE YOUTH 

I. LESSON STATEMENT 

Think of a peasant who has lived for years in a village in some 
secluded valley of Europe, where the modes of industry are primi- 
tive and the intellectual horizon narrow and restricted, transplanted 
within a few months to a noisy, throbbing, seething industrial com- 
munity in some American city. With what perplexing problems of 
adjustment is he confronted! Where can he fit in? What shall 
he do? There were some fine things in his old life — moral habits 
and traditions handed down to him from the past. He had at- 
tained some skill in workmanship. But how can he adjust himself 
to the new industrial and social order? 

Something similar to the experience of the immigrant, says Irving 
King, occurs in the life of the youth in the first years of adolescence. 
The problem of the immigrant is that he shall not lose everything of 
value out of his past in the process of finding himself in the new 
and larger life. If he is to become a good citizen, "it will not be 
by ruthlessly casting off as rubbish all his past life, but rather by 
building upon it, as a foundation, the structure of his American 
citizenship. ... In just this manner is a normal transition from 
childhood to manhood to be sought. . . . Through a series of ad- 
justments and extensions of the childhood life . . . the youth comes 
to manhood." 1 

The problem, however, is not altogether one of adjustment. Some- 
where in these years, as the result of a gradual process or of a 
sudden transformation, there is the emergence of a new self. We 
might almost say, as indeed it is sometimes said, that a new per- 
sonality is born. The need is that of retaining, when the old shell 
of childhood is cast off, all that is of permanent significance and 
value in the earlier life and of building out of new materials a new, 
stronger, and more noble personality. 

An outstanding fact that complicates the study of this age is that 
the group is divided into two classes — those who are continuing 



1 Cf. The High School Age. p. 90. 

IOO 



MIDDLE YOUTH 101 

their education through attendance upon high school and those who 
have entered the ranks of industry. A sharp line of demarcation 
between these two groups becomes almost immediately apparent. 
The industrial group is by far the more numerous. Too largely our 
educational studies have dealt almost exclusively with the interests 
and needs of the high-school group. 

i. THE SENIOR 

In our present Sunday-school terminology the name applied to 
members of this group is "Seniors." There is nothing to be said for 
this term; it is subject to frequent misunderstanding and should 
give way to something better. 

i. The Body. — Within this period a physical transformation takes 
place. The boisterous, awkward boy becomes a comely, manly youth ; 
the overgrown, homely girl, a graceful, ladylike young woman. 
Bones, muscles, and nerves, during these years, attain almost adult 
proportion. Frequently the full height of the girl and almost full 
weight are attained at sixteen. The boy continues to grow for a 
year or two. By the close of the period the brain has reached prac- 
tically its maximum size and weight; the heart and the lungs their 
maximum capacity. The muscles have become accustomed to delicate 
adjustments and are ready for final training. 

Remarkable physical energy and endurance are showm. Games 
that require motor activity are most enjoyed, such as baseball, foot- 
ball, basketball, tennis, and the like. Skating, running, jumping, 
and similar athletic sports are popular. Just such vigorous physical 
exercise is needed, both for reasons of health and of morality. Long 
hours of sleep are still required. Too much social life is not only 
fatiguing to the body but nervously exhausting as well and should 
be avoided. 

2. The Mind. — Middle adolescence is characterized by increased 
mental activity and power. 

a. The intellect is strengthened. A marked intellectual awaken- 
ing is not uncommon. The capacity for serious study is enlarged. 
In this stage of development the youth tends to think things out 
for himself, independently of inherited traditions and the teaching 
he has received. Many of the philosophers and great teachers of 
the past became independent thinkers at this age. Every adolescent 
shows at least some disposition to question beliefs and customs. It 
is not that he has become at heart a doubter ; he has simply become 
conscious of his own intellectual powers and he has a commendable 
desire to exercise them. Clear, logical reasoning satisfies him, but 



102 THE PUPIL 

he knows more than he is often given credit for knowing by his 
adult teachers, and he despises shallow intellectual pretense. 

The intellectual life is broadened as well as strengthened in these 
years. It is likely to be a time of multiplied interests and of varied 
activity. The youth wants to do first one thing and then another. 
Interests that are radically different and that seem almost con- 
tradictory may develop simultaneously. A process of unconscious 
sifting is going on. Some interests will die out; others will prove 
permanent. 

These are years of aspiration. "Ambitions are as natural to the 
person of sixteen or seventeen," says Haslett, "as crying is to a 
babe three months old." Careers of high achievement are mapped 
out in imagination. Nor are these merely castles built in the air. 
The vocational interest that now develops often determines the 
course of the whole life. 

b. The feelings continue to deepen and intensify. Most of the 
students of adolescence lay stress upon this. "It is a time when we 
expect intense emotions and strong reactions," says King. "There 
is increased capacity for sentiment," says Coe. "This is the age 
at which emotion and sentiment may be expected to be at their 
maximum in the girl," says Moxcey. This means that there is a 
general enrichment of the emotional life that may be expected to 
manifest itself in various ways. There is a new joy in living. 
Jollity and laughter hold sway. Girls may be gay and giddy ; boys 
hilarious and pleasure mad. In others the very opposite character- 
istics may be seen — an excessive seriousness that at times may be- 
come despondency. The girl is not merely fond of the object of 
her affection ! she adores it, whether "it" is a new dress, a picture, 
a pet dog, or her teacher. The boy does not merely like something ; 
he is "crazy" about it ; he is "wildly enthusiastic" ; he has a "crush." 

The moral sentiments may now be expected to awaken to new 
life and power. There is a deeper appreciation of the beautiful and 
the good. There is a new realization of right and of wrong and a 
deeper feeling of responsibility for the right. There is a keener 
consciousness of sin and a deepening of the sense of guilt. There 
is a desire for forgiveness and a longing for inner peace. No longer 
can we say that conduct is unmoral ; it is now moral or immoral. 

Altruistic impulses are now felt, and unselfishness or selfishness 
is manifested accordingly as they prevail against the individualistic 
instincts or give way to them. 

c. The will now begins to attain to its full strength. The basis 
of the vigor and power of will that may now be expected to be 



MIDDLE YOUTH 103 

shown is well set forth by Kirkpatrick: "If the training has been 
good, the muscular apparatus is completely under control, and the 
mental apparatus almost equally so. The individual gains power 
to direct his imaginings, his memory, and his thinking in any direc- 
tion that he chooses. Changes in all these respects are so rapid that 
the youth often feels that all things are possible to him, and he may, 
when there is a stimulating ideal, show a vigor and persistence of 
will not surpassed at any other period." 

3. Distinguishing Characteristics. — What are the characteristics 
that stand out most prominently in the conduct of boys and girls 
of this age? ■ 

a. A new sense of power, a buoyancy of spirit, and a quickness and 
positiveness in decision arc almost certain to be in evidence. The 
marked intensity of the early "teens" now takes more definite form. 
The longing for freedom and the revolt against authority, manifest 
earlier, take shape in positive action. The strengthened organs, 
the increased volume of well-oxygenated blood driven at high pres- 
sure — in brief, the oncoming of physical maturity accompanying the 
new consciousness of selfhood, the intensified feelings, and the em- 
powered will — produces this new kind and quality of conduct. 

b. Variability and more or less inconstancy are still to be expected. 
Character is taking on permanent form, but it has not yet attained 
it. The wavering, the adventurousness, the uncertainty, and the 
desire for experiment that characterized early adolescence have not 
entirely passed. The teacher of boys and girls in their middle "teens" 
must always be prepared to reckon with the element of surprise, 
with the unexpected and incalculable happening. 

c. Conduct is largely under the dominance of emotion and senti- 
ment. It is a time of emotional intensity within; inhibition is not 
yet well established, and conduct and conversation alike reflect the 
warmth and glow of the emotions. The whole organism is re- 
sponsive to stimuli from any source. "It is as difficult," says Miss 
Moxcey, "for a girl in the heart of her 'teens' to use language with- 
out italics, superlatives, and exclamation points as it is for her body 
to resist the rhythm of music." Intense emotions and strong re- 
actions are to be expected. It is a time of laughter, of the free 
expression of joy and satisfaction, of irresponsible pranks that attest 
nothing so much as the sheer physical delight of being alive. 

d. At times carefree, thoughtless action alternates with dreaming 
and introspection. The youth is still a dreamer. As the boy pores 
over his books he looks far beyond the printed page into some realm 
of fancy in which he is the doer of great and mighty deeds. The 



104 THE PUPIL 

girl, busying herself with such prosaic tasks as sweeping or wash- 
ing dishes, is in imagination the center of a charmed circle every 
member of which acknowledges her grace and wit. The adolescent 
feels that there is a capacity within that is as yet unexpressed, a 
power that has not found its field, ideas that have not been formu- 
lated in speech. Hours are spent in picturing in imagination the 
achievements that •will some day manifest this hidden power. The 
idealism of youth is one of its choicest possessions. It carries boy 
and girl alike "over many untoward circumstances and renders them 
oblivious to many of the sordid influences that play upon them and 
strive to check their gropings after the larger life which they feel 
is unfolding before them/' 

e. A new susceptibility to social influences becomes manifest. 
This evidences the broadening and deepening of the social instinct. 
Teamwork becomes natural. The girl follows slavishly the fads 
and fashions of her set. The boy begins to give attention to his 
clothing, to the way he ties his necktie, and even takes pains in 
blacking his shoes properly. There is increased anxiety to have 
the approval of others, especially of the social group to which one 
belongs, and to gain that approval by conformity to its laws. Pride 
in and loyalty to the group, whether the "gang," the "clique," the 
class, the family, the school, the church, the city, the State, the 
nation, is strengthened. The altruistic interest in life is developing, 
and the impulse to serve is making itself felt. 

/. Comradeship now extends to persons of the opposite sex. The 
sex repulsion of the early teens disappears. Boys and girls now 
manifest a liking for one another's company. The sex impulse is 
developing, but its manifestations are "for the most part vague and 
formless and without definition to the youth." Psychologists recog- 
nize in this impulse "the hidden spring" of much of the most at- 
tractive and significant development of the period. 

Few of either boys or girls go through the years of middle adoles- 
cence without a first love affair. Says Bourne : "Whether it be art, 
a girl, socialism, religion, the sentiment is the same ; the youth is 
swept away by a flood of love. He has learned to value, and how 
superlative and magnificent are his values ! . . . Love is youth's 
virtue, and it is wide as well as deep. . . . The first love o-f youth for 
anything is pure and ethereal and disinterested." 

2. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE SENIOR 

Thus far our study of middle adolescence has concerned itself 
with the characteristics and interests of the period. What moral 



MIDDLE YOUTH 105 

and religious needs have become evident? How may the interests 
we have discovered be utilized in the development of Christian 
character? How may the characteristics of middle youth be best 
dealt with — those that are fraught with danger held in check ; those 
that are full of promise for Christian character and service strength- 
ened and developed? These are our problems. 

Middle adolescence has an importance, all its own. "The traits of 
character that are there established, and the pattern of personality 
into which they are woven, are apt to remain permanent." We 
know now that a certain degree of plasticity persists in adult life. 
Nevertheless, "far-reaching or fundamental changes in interests, 
tastes, temperament, purposes, and ideals are much less likely to 
occur after twenty than before." Character now is taking on its 
permanent form. "Whatever characteristics are allowed to assert 
themselves in these years are very apt to persist throughout life. A 
boy who habitually permits himself to be morose, untruthful, in- 
sincere, unsociable, sensual, or ill-tempered up to the time he is 
twenty will have great difficulty in making himself over into any- 
thing else." 

1. Environment. — The need is for a healthy, pure, happy environ- 
ment, with abundant opportunity for social good times participated 
in by both boys and girls. The cooperation and oversight of older 
friends is essential. The young people should be led to feel that 
the presence of a chaperon, rather than being something to be 
tolerated, is required by the standard they have set for themselves. 

Abundant provision should be made for games and athletics. The 
gymnasium, the tennis court, and baseball and football fields are 
important adjuncts of the church because of the possibility they 
furnish of creating a normal, healthy physical and social environ- 
ment for adolescents. 

Whatever tends to stimulate the sex impulse supplies an element 
• of moral danger. It is under this indictment that so large a pro- 
portion of the moving-picture shows, as well as the vaudeville, the 
popular songs, and the public dance, have been condemned at the 
bar of enlightened, sober public opinion. 

The deep desire of early youth for some one who can under- 
stand and, without asking many questions, offer sympathetic fellow- 
ship continues. The successful teacher must first of all be an un- 
derstanding friend. The stimulating influence of the teacher whose 
character and personality are such as to inspire esteem and affection 
in the members of the class, whether boys or girls, has a rare 
opportunity to enter vitally into. their lives. At no period in life 



106 THE PUPIL 

is the influence of personality in the formation of ideals greater 
than now. As Jesus taught his disciples more by living with them 
than by spoken word, so the teacher of boys and girls in their 
middle "teens" is to teach by entering sympathetically and help- 
fully into the lives of his pupils, permitting them to see the truth 
in his character and conduct as well as to hear it in his words, and, 
by example and tactful guidance, aiding them to translate truth 
into life and service. 

Let young people themselves tell us the kind of teacher that helped 
them most during the middle teen years. The most successful 
teacher, writes one, was "the one who gave us all she had of sym- 
pathy and interest." "My best teacher," says another, "was always 
fair and just. She never discouraged us by sarcasm, a fault which 
many teachers have." "A teacher to be successful," writes another, 
"should be sympathetic and pleasant, but at the same time deter- 
mined and firm and should expect the pupils to cooperate heartily 
in carrying out the plans both of study and other class work that 
have been agreed upon." 

2. Instruction. — Reading interests have now become individual- 
ised. It is no longer possible to make broad generalizations that 
hold for all. Many are not reading as much as earlier. The in- 
vestigations of Kirkpatrick and others tend to show that the read- 
ing interest reaches its height at fourteen or fifteen and then de- 
clines rapidly. There is likely to be an increase of interest in the 
daily newspapers and the weekly journals that discuss leading ques- 
tions of the day. With some there is an accession of interest in 
poetry, music, and art. 

What should be the general character of the lesson material for 
middle adolescents? There is distinct value in biography for this 
age, but the emphasis must needs be different. No longer should 
chief prominence be given to the outer aspects of the life; at least 
equal attention should be devoted to a study of the motives, purposes, 
and ideals that have acted as the inner springs of conduct. 

Now is the time for the life and character of Christ to be so 
presented that the youth will become intimately acquainted with him. 
Fragmentary, superficial teaching here is deplorable. Pupils of this 
age need to know Jesus Christ. They should have come earlier 
to a familiar acquaintance with the background of his life and the 
facts of the gospel history. If they do not possess these, they should 
now be given this knowledge. They need to know the aims, motives, 
and purposes that actuated the life of Christ. They need to know 
his will for men. They need to be led to an appreciation of the 



MIDDLE YOUTH 107 

matchless beauty, strength, and symmetry of the life and character 
of Jesus. They need to be led to a personal faith in Jesus as their 
Lord and Saviour, or, if they have come earlier to such a faith, as 
normally many of them will have done, they need to have their 
faith in him vitalized and deepened and their love for him and their 
loyalty to him strengthened. This is the great central teaching task 
of the teacher of boys and girls in middle adolescence. To it the 
teacher should devote all of the earnestness and skill of which he 
is capable. 

Following this study a year may very profitably be spent upon the 
question of what it means to be a Christian. Such a study should 
not be abstract and theoretical, but concrete and practical, dealing 
among other questions with as many as possible of the actual situa- 
tions which present themselves to boys and girls of this age, the 
aim being to strengthen and give permanence to the altruistic senti- 
ments, to clarify and deepen the moral and ethical sentiments, and 
to lead them to an active and joyous participation in the Christian 
fellowship and service. 

A third year of study may be devoted primarily to a survey of 
the fields of life service open to young people, with the object of 
aiding them to answer wisely the question of where and how to 
invest their lives. Van Denberg, in a study of one thousand high- 
school pupils found that fifty-nine per cent of the boys and forty- 
nine per cent of the girls had decided or were ready to express a 
choice of lifework. A study of an equal number of those who 
have left school would doubtless show a considerably larger per- 
centage. Vocational interest insures that this will be a popular and 
helpful subject. 1 

Whatever the subject of instruction, the teacher will in large 
measure fail unless he leads the pupils to inquire, investigate, think, 
and form conclusions for themselves. These processes are actually 
going on in their minds as regards some subjects, and the results 
of these processes are determining their ideals and influencing their 
conduct. If they are not thus treating their Sunday-school lessons, 
it means that the lessons are not vitally influencing them. 

Both boys and girls should now be instructed concerning the 
significance of their emotions as related to the facts of sex. "At 
this age not to know of passion is indeed 'not to know the pistol 
was loaded' or not to know the water was over a foot deep under 



1 Compare the statement of aim and the contents of the following courses, 
International Graded Series: "Studies in the Life of Christ"; "Studies in 
Christian Living"; "The World: a Field for Christian Service." 



108 THE PUPIL 

the rocking boat" As so many parents seem to be without con- 
science in the matter, teachers should take it upon themselves to 
inculcate ideals that will place under the ban the dangerous and 
inexcusable courting customs that still prevail so generally in village 
and rural communities, whereby the immature boy and girl are left 
alone in each other's company often for hours at a time. 

3. Training in Worship. — The principles set forth in the pre- 
ceding chapter ("Early Youth" — "Training in Worship," page 91) 
hold good for the period of middle youth. But little perhaps re- 
quires to be added. 

Boys and girls are now prepared to share in the awe, the spiritual 
exaltation, and the holy joy of congregational worship. The serv- 
ices of the church should be such in form and content as to offer 
to them this experience, and they should be expected to attend. 

There is now more freedom of expression in speaking of the 
deeper interests and inner experiences of life than in the secretive, 
self-conscious years of the preceding period. Testimony and intimate 
personal conversation on spiritual themes should now be encouraged. 
The emphasis placed in the past upon the value of testimony has a 
sound basis in religious psychology. Nevertheless, some caution is 
needed. The easy garrulousness of some young people in talking 
of religious experiences promotes shallow spirituality, an irreverence 
toward the Deity, and a lack of exact truthfulness. 

Devotional Bible reading and private prayer are necessary means 
of the cultivation of the inner life. The teacher can do much to 
develop both into fixed habits. Pupils will need guidance in Bible 
reading. The teacher may supply lists of daily readings, ready 
prepared or original, based upon the lesson or centering in themes 
otherwise presented, to be used by all members of the class in com- 
mon. The class may also be constituted a secret-prayer circle, with 
special objects of prayer chosen from time to time by the class 
and made the subject of occasional mention by the teacher in con- 
versation and in the class session. 

4. Training in Christian Conduct and Service.— A great need 
now is experience in Christian living — conduct motivated by the 
highest Christian ideals and definite acts that will tend to make 
Christian service a habit of life. 

All that was said in the preceding chapter on the importance of 
the control of conduct from within holds with doubled significance 
for this age. The time for government by absolute monarchy has 
passed ; the age of democracy has come. Only that conduct now has 
significance in the determination of character that is the free expres- 



MIDDLE YOUTH 109 

sion of inner desire and purpose. The pupil must be led to feel 
that his future character is his own responsibility, that the time has 
come for him to take himself rigidly in hand. If wrong attitudes 
or harmful dispositions are manifested, or evil acts committed, it 
must be made clear to him that the responsibility for them and for 
overcoming them rests squarely upon his own shoulders. The love 
and sympathy of the Christ for the sinner should now be made very 
real, and his readiness to forgive and to impart needed help and 
strength assured. Approach should be made both through feeling 
and will. The teacher may be confident that there is in every pupil 
a deep desire to, be somebody and to achieve worthily to which 
appeal can be made. 

The newly developed personality craves recognition. In most 
cases it is determined to have it ; if not in one way, then in another ; 
if not under given conditions, by creating different conditions. Few 
mistakes are more serious at this stage than for the teacher to dis- 
regard or to count as of little importance the wishes and opinions 
of these boys or girls or to manifest any lack of confidence in them. 
The wise teacher trusts his pupils and makes them feel that he 
trusts them. He places responsibility upon them and increases that 
responsibility as rapidly as they prove their readiness for it. Any 
group organization for pupils of this age, for whatever purpose, to 
be successful must be self-governing. Any plan of organization 
"put over" upon a group, or imposed from above, or decided upon 
by a minority is foredoomed to failure. Self-government, its form 
determined by the free, conscious, responsible voice of the majority, 
is the only effective government for middle adolescence. 

Contradictions hard to understand are observed in the conduct of 
these boys and girls. "Snitching," "swiping," cheating in recitations 
and in examination, and various forms of group violence are exceed- 
ingly common among high-school students and college freshmen. 
Over against these are to be placed the many examples of extreme 
conscientiousness and over-exactness, of self-imposed, legalistic, 
moral regime, and of severe self-condemnation familiar to all work- 
ers with young people. Both extremes may sometimes be observed in 
the conduct of the same individual within a brief period of time. A 
partial explanation is found in the variability mentioned as a charac- 
teristic of this period. Another element is loyalty to fellow mem- 
bers of the group and the dominance of group standards that are at 
variance with the personal ideals of at least the better trained mem- 
bers. Whatever the explanation, it is important that the teacher 
shall help his pupils to overcome these contradictions in their con- 



no THE PUPIL 

duct. The relation between religion and righteousness (right con- 
duct) must be made perfectly clear. The girl who slyly copies sen- 
tences from the examination paper of the pupil sitting next to her 
and on the following Sunday testifies to her love for Jesus and 
declares that she sees no inconsistency in her actions must be 
patiently helped to realize what loyalty to Jesus involves in terms 
of moral conduct. The boy who indignantly declares that he would 
not "tattle" on a "pal" must be tactfully led to see that it is a false 
loyalty that sacrifices one's own moral ideals in an effort to shield 
the weakness or guilt of a chum. Loyalty is to be interpreted in 
terms of devotion to the higher good and to the good of the whole 
group. 

Social influences can now be used in a new and larger way. The 
nurture of the religious feelings, ideals of Christian behavior, reli- 
gious ideas, the very experience of religion come to the youth 
through personal stimulus and example, through association and 
companionship. The group activities of the organized class — its 
Sunday session, social gatherings, special religious meetings for 
prayer and fellowship on the religious festival days and other occa- 
sions, and other class meetings — will prove to be a fruitful means 
of deepening religious interest and giving the Sunday school and the 
church a vital and permanent place in the pupil's life. 

A variety of activities should be provided. Variety is required 
to supply abundant means of satisfying and developing the broad- 
ened interests. The personality is expanding and it should be given 
opportunity for expansion. The boy or girl who has only one in- 
terest needs to be awakened from mental lethargy. The life of high- 
school students is very full ; every hour seems overcrowded, and 
often the tendency of parents is to feel that the Sunday school should 
make only minimum demands upon the pupils' time. But it is to 
be remembered that these boys and girls have an insatiable craving 
for varied and manifold activities. Dullness and monotony are in- 
tolerable. In their crowded program the Sunday school as a chief 
agency of moral and religious training should have a real place. 
First in importance should come provision for service activities. 
To neglect systematic plans for service activities in these years is 
to overlook a principal means of developing Christian character. 
Every community offers opportunities for social and religious min- 
istries "in His name" while the most remote and needy corners of 
the globe are no farther removed than the nearest mail box. A 
teacher with an adequate appreciation of the importance of service 
as a means of moral and religious nurture will not experience great 



MIDDLE YOUTH in 

difficulty in finding things for the pupils to do. Apart from service 
ministries to persons, earning money to furnish a hospital room, 
giving an entertainment for the benefit of some special cause, plant- 
ing and tending a garden for an old people's home, and constructive 
work in furnishing the church and Sunday-school building and in 
providing equipment, are a few of many activities that may be ex- 
pected to appeal to youth and that are required as a means of a 
rounded out moral and religious development. 

Let no one think in this day that provision for recreation lies 
without the sphere of the church and Sunday school. Jane Addams 
declares that the recreation of youth is the prime moral problem of 
our day in the cities. It is certainly not less a problem in villages 
and rural communities. The church's traditional policy of repres- 
sion not only has the inherent weakness of being negative ; it wholly 
fails with large numbers of young people, whom it alienates. Most 
young people will have amusement and recreation. If the church 
will not provide it, they will find it elsewhere. The worst of it is 
that those agencies to which they turn for the satisfaction of in- 
stinctive interests are dominated by commercial motives, without, 
as a rule, any saving element of ethical ideals or altruistic purposes. 
Surely the wise direction of recreation offers a supreme opportunity 
of moral and religious service. 

5. Results to be Expected. — 

a. Spiritual awakening. — During this period — speaking in terms 
of averages, in the sixteenth or seventeenth year — there is likely 
to be a spiritual awakening of great significance. This is commonly 
described as the second great climax of religious awakening. For 
many, who have not earlier come into a clear consciousness of their 
life with God, this is a conversion experience. For others, who 
earlier registered a definite decision, this awakening brings new 
moral earnestness, deeper religious devotion, new interest and joy in 
religious observances, and new consecration to a life of service. 

Since this is a time when feelings are deep and strong, it is to 
be expected that religion will have a new birth in feeling. The 
dominance of feeling at this period may be said largely to account 
for the extent of response by young people to religious appeals, but 
the significance of the response is not to be measured in terms 
of mere feeling. With his whole nature the youth now comes into 
a close and satisfying personal relationship to God. This is the 
high spiritual privilege of middle adolescence that every teacher 
should hold before his pupils. 

This is not to say that every pupil will have precisely the same 



ii2 THE PUPIL 

form of religious experience as every other. The appeal to emotion 
and sentiment may be freely made, but it should not be over-fre- 
quent, and the same response should not be expected from all. 

b. The fruits of misdirection. — As the natural fruits of neglect 
and misdirection an early harvest of immorality and of criminal acts 
may be expected. The pitiful fact, the awful indictment of our 
ignorance, indifference, and neglect, is in this that our American 
communities have hosts of youths who are lawbreakers, many of 
them vicious criminals. Especially in the larger cities the machinery 
of the courts is kept in motion by youthful criminality. The smaller 
towns and villages have their gangs of loafers and "young toughs." 
Boy delinquents are five times as numerous as girl offenders, but 
even of the latter there are far too many. The cause is not far to 
seek. The church has been too busy ministering to selfish adults 
to fulfill its ministry to youth. It has concerned itself so exclu- 
sively with saving the lost that it has had no time or effort left 
for preventing loss. It has lacked sympathy with and understand- 
ing of boy and girl nature. Impulses and tendencies innocent in 
themselves have been allowed to run riot. A lack of interest by 
boys and girls in a dull, ill-advised, and inadequate program has 
been misconstrued. Manifestations of natural instincts and normal 
impulses have been misinterpreted. Feeling that he is misunder- 
stood, that no one cares, and in some cases being actually told that 
he is not wanted, the boy has left the Sunday school. The whole 
responsibility does not lie with the church : the home and the public 
school must bear their full share of blame — but we are not now 
considering their shortcomings. The ties binding him to the home, 
the school, and the Sunday school once broken, a start made in the 
wrong way — and it is a short, quick journey to moral bankruptcy. 

6. The Challenge of the Situation. — There is tremendous chal- 
lenge in the importance, in the swiftly passing opportunities, and 
in the glorious promise of the middle "teen" years. Is there not 
challenge also in the very fact that in the past we have failed to 
sense the importance, to make the most of the opportunities, and 
to realize upon the promise of these years? Let us accept the 
challenge ! Let us undertake a new ministry to youth ! Let us con- 
tinue our preparation, that we may make our ministry rich, abun- 
dant, and fruitful ! 

II. CONSTRUCTIVE TASK 

i. Make a thoughtful study of one or more boys or girls 
of about sixteen. Note the characteristics which appear 



MIDDLE YOUTH 113 

most prominently in their conduct. Compare them with 
others of about thirteen. 

2. As you look back to this period in your own life, what 
moral and religious needs now seem to you to have been 
most acute ? 

3. Write briefly on the following: 

a. Some of the more important requirements in a teacher 
of middle adolescents. 

b. Lesson needs of pupils of this age. 

c. Ways of making use of the rapidly developing social 
instinct. 

III. MEMORY ASSIGNMENT 

"Year after year beheld the silent toil 
That spread the lustrous coil ; 
Still, as the spiral grew, 

He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 
Built up its idle door, 
Stretched in his last found home and knew the old no more. 

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
As the swift seasons roll ! 
Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
Till thou at length art free. 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea !" 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

IV. REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

In the Library 

1. A description of middle adolescence: Pedagogical Bible School, Haslett, 

pp. 158-176. 

2. The problem of expression: Girlhood and Character, Moxcev, Chap. 

XV. 



CHAPTER XI 

LATER YOUTH 

I. LESSON STATEMENT 

To youth the world is 'great and glorious. Nothing is common- 
place. "Life is roseate, and all the future is golden." The youth 
dreams of conquest. In imagination the great world is open to 
him; it will soon come to feel his power. A general's commission, 
a bishopric, the presidential chair, great possessions — the highest 
place, in whatever vocation he may choose, seems easily within his 
reach. 

In our study of adolescence we have now come to the third stage 
— the period of later adolescence, or later youth. This period, as 
we have already stated, includes the years eighteen to approximately 
twenty- four. 

I. YOUNG PEOPLE 

i. Body. — Physical growth, save in exceptional cases, is completed 
at nineteen or twenty; with many even earlier. Muscular develop- 
ment now takes the form of perfecting of structure. The energy 
that earlier went into growth is now available for the development 
of strength. Power of endurance is greatly increased and by the 
close of the period is at its height. Military leaders prefer young 
men under thirty. The energies of the body are at floodtide; the 
senses at their keenest. 

2. Mind. — Physical development is matched by development of 
the mind. 

a. The intellect is now restlessly active. The reason has reached 
full development. Thought and purpose, rather than the emotions, 
hold the center of the stage. Given abundant opportunity for 
thought and sufficient stimulus, rapid development of intellectual 
power may be expected. Now, if ever, the intellect is ready for 
serious study. A list of the great and enduring works of the world 
that represent the output of the mind of youth would be astonishing. 

The interests have a wide scope and are as strong as they are 
varied. Recreational interests continue strong, and fondness for 
athletic contests reaches its height. The dramatic interest is 

114 






LATER YOUTH 115 

strengthened. The sex instinct is increased in power. A permanent 
choice of vocation or the ratification of an earlier choice is almost 
sure to be made. 

The critical spirit of youth, which often takes the form of philo- 
sophic or religious doubt, should not be regarded as an alarming 
characteristic. It is indicative of the mind's outreach for truth; it 
is the youth's way of attaining to a world view and to a religious 
faith of his own. 

b. The feelings become more subject to control. Less wavering 
is manifest ; more of stability and permanence is acquired. Certain 
of the feelings may be expected to broaden and deepen. For 
example, the altruistic feelings are stronger and more influential ; 
there is a more ready sympathy and often a willingness to make 
real sacrifice for others. Normally a steady advance should take 
place away from the self-centered attitude of childhood toward 
altruism. But this development is not without conflict. Pride and 
self-conceit, leading to self-assertion and habitual insistence on 
personal rights, may stifle the growth of sympathy and altruism. 

c. The will is vigorous and persistent and readily responds to 
direct appeal. The power of self-control and of self-direction is 
increased. Young People are not so suggestible as children ; they 
are more independent of impulse. But whatever comes as a chal- 
lenge to the will awakens response and influences action. They 
are now prepared to hold to their purposes against strong opposition. 

3. Distinguishing Characteristics. — Numerous characteristics 
observable in the conduct of the middle teens persist during part 
or all of this period. What are some of the characteristics you 
have noticed as continuing? Other characteristics, beginning to be 
manifest in middle adolescence, now become prominent. 

a. Individuality becomes manifest in conduct and habit as in 
thought and interests. Individual traits become more prominent. 
The time of self-realization and self-revelation is at hand. The 
gang is likely to dissolve, since its members, who a few years before 
apparently had everything in common, now stand forth as distinct 
individuals, each with his own peculiar desires and interests and 
strongly inclined to follow the way of his own choice. 

b. Aspiration and hope inspire earnest, enthusiastic effort. Youth 
is forever dreaming dreams and seeing visions. Both young men 
and young women aspire to things that are high and difficult of 
attainment. Extreme devotion and splendid renunciation are native 
to them. They take no account of obstacles, are daunted by no 
opposition, recognize no impossibilities. What ought to be can be, 



n6 THE PUPIL 

and what can be must be. He who has no dreams of high achieve- 
ment, whose conduct shows no reaching out after high ideals, is 
an exception and is to be pitied ; for the youth's aspiration is more 
than mere dreaming. One has said that "the spirit of great men 
is essentially the spirit of youth, with its never-ending enthusiasms, 
its untiring energy, its daring, its vision." 

c. Conduct shows a quickening of moral insight. With these 
years an ethical discernment, not before possessed, comes to be. 
Moral convictions become stronger ; the sense of duty is more deeply 
rooted. Conscience speaks with a mighty voice. "Right is mightily 
right, and wrong is tremendously wrong." Often Young People show 
that they despise casuistry, temporizing, or compromising with evil. 
They are outspoken in condemnation of evil and evildoers ; they 
will neither condone nor excuse. Not infrequently they expect per- 
fection in those who make religious profession, and, failing to find 
it, are themselves caused to stumble. 

d. Deeds of courage and heroism are not infrequently in evidence. 
Youth has boundless admiration for the pioneer and the soldier. 
But the heroic spirit in youth does not exhaust itself in admiring 
brave deeds in others. It has daring and courage and readiness for 
adventure. It needs no artificial stimulation or material incitement 
for deeds of noble courage. It is ready to dare and to do. Peril 
and hardship have no power to daunt or dismay. Youth is ready 
for any conflict. Many of the wars of the past have been fought 
principally by boys of this age, and they have had a tremendous 
part in the latest and greatest of all wars. 

2. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE 

The full span of human life is brief. The stage is narrow at its 
greatest width, and three generations are crowded upon it. One is 
in the process of preparation ; to it has been given the making of 
the future. The second is working in feverish haste; it has an ^un- 
certain hold upon the present. The third is rapidly passing off; 
it takes with it the past. The period of later youth is the final 
stage of preparation and training before the coming of the oppor- 
tunities and responsibilities of mature life. The time is brief. If 
these latent resources, so rich in promises of spiritual achievement, 
are to be made the most of, there is not a day to lose. 

i. Environment. — The environment of place is not now so influ- 
ential as earlier. Young People tend to influence and change their 
environment more than to be influenced and changed by it. 

The environment of persons continues to be important. It is 



LATER YOUTH 117 

often the case that both young men and young women need con- 
genial, helpful associations and fellowship more than almost any- 
thing else. Sympathetic encouragement and wise personal counsel 
in the first steps of working out a career will frequently make 
possible the realization of an unexpressed vision and save a youth 
from a life of mediocrity. 

A group of sixty ministers and teachers were asked to state what 
influences were potent in their lives between eighteen and twenty- 
five in the development of moral character. It is significant that 
a majority replied in terms of the influence of personal associations. 
We quote a few typical statements : "The influence of the college 
president under whom I placed myself, and who became my ideal 
of a cultured, Christian gentleman, was a most potent factor in 
settling my convictions, confirming me in my life purpose and start- 
ing me in my lifework." "The example and counsel of an older 
sister who gave her life for work in China was the most influential 
factor in my life during these years." "At this time a great love 
entered my soul, my first and only great love, an affection for a 
young woman of my own age. This young woman awakened in me 
a desire and purpose to overcome almost insurmountable obstacles. 
She stood by me and helped me to become what I am." "A sym- 
pathetic, companionable preacher, who was at the same time my 
Sunday-school teacher, gave me, freely, counsel that was of inesti- 
mable worth, walked with me through the valley of a great sorrow, 
and taught me how to fight out life's battles on my knees. He helped 
me to really trust God. Magazines, good books, and Bible study had 
an important part in maturing my character ; but this man entered 
into my life as a friend and guided me when without his help I 
surely would have gone down." 

2. Instruction. — The importance of instruction is greater at no 
other period of life than now. The intellect, as we have seen, has 
tended to gain ascendancy over the emotions. Ideas rather than 
feelings are become chiefly influential in determining choices and 
directing action. Instruction that will supply moral and religious 
ideas and ideals is required. The moral judgment needs to be in- 
formed and moral and religious convictions deepened and strength- 
ened. 

It is clear that serious study, if ever in order, is in order now. 
The childish things of the mind are put away. There is a common 
desire on the part of all Young People to get underneath surface 
facts and inquire into foundations. 

In considering what courses of instruction should be offered it 



ii8 THE PUPIL 

is necessary to take cognizance of certain more or less distinct groups 
among Young People. There is, for example, the college group, 
consisting of those who are pursuing a college course or have just 
completed one. A second group is made up of those who are just 
out of high school and who have entered upon business pursuits or 
some other means of earning a livelihood. A third group is made 
up of those whose educational training was cut short at the close 
of their grammar-school course. It becomes immediately evident 
that we are confronted in this period with a zander range of instruc- 
tional need than among pupils in any preceding period. 

Young People in college or who have completed a college course 
should be offered courses of religious instruction that will not suffer 
in comparison with their college studies. The courses of a religious 
character that they have had in college should be supplemented by 
other courses of equal strength in the Sunday school. With these 
students thoroughgoing, critical study is in order. Those who have 
had high-school training are also prepared for somewhat thorough 
courses of religious instruction, in such subjects as the life and 
teachings of Jesus, the life and teaching of Paul, the history of 
Israel, the teachings of the prophets, the history of the Christian 
church, the progress of Christian missions, etc. Young People who 
left school at the eighth grade or before will have their limitations 
which must not be overlooked ; for them courses not too difficult 
must be provided. 

The development of individual interests and the desire to choose 
for themselves makes it important that elective courses be offered. 
Just as the elective principle has been recognized in college, so should 
recognition be given to it in the Sunday school. Young People will 
take more interest in their courses if the opportunity of choice has 
been presented to them and they have been given a real part in 
deciding what should be studied. 

Among other courses ample provision should be made for courses 
of training for future teachers and officers of the Sunday school 
and church. Every Sunday school should have a group of Young 
People in preparation for leadership. Much of the most success- 
ful teacher training now being done is in Young People's classes 
meeting at the Sunday-school hour. In these years, when permanent 
decisions for lifework are being made, the great fields of social and 
religious service should be held before Young People by their 
religious teachers, and they should be aided in making definite 
choices and urged to seek the best possible preparation. 

Not infrequently doubt is expressed by Young People. The teacher 



LATER YOUTH 119 

should bear in mind that the doubt of youth is in reality an evidence 
of individual search for the foundations of truth. The youth wants 
to come to a faith of his own. He seeks to discover what he believes, 
and why. Usually he is open to reason, waiting to be shown. His 
questions will be satisfied by a sufficient answer. Scorn or rebuke 
will lead him to think they are unanswerable. The youthful doubter 
should be encouraged to continue his search until his questionings 
are satisfied; the unresolved doubt of youth settles into the unrea- 
soning skepticism and blatant infidelity of adulthood. It is a time, 
says Coe, when the teacher needs statesmanship — "the statesmanship 
that believes in freedom of thought; that believes in the capacity 
of young persons of serious mind to attain a personal conviction 
on all points that are essential to their characters ; that conceals 
nothing and resorts .to no indirection or subterfuge ; that has sym- 
pathy, good humor, patience ; that refuses to permit any young per- 
son to excommunicate himself in act or feeling because of his 
doubts, . . . finally, that engages young people in active service of 
humanity — even in the midst of severest doubts." 1 

3. Training in Worship. — Expression in worship should be given 
a prominent place in Young People's work. Participation in con- 
gregational worship should be expected, and none of the services 
provided for or by the Y'oung People should be regarded as taking 
the place of it. The public service rightly should be regarded as 
coming first. It is not, however, sufficient in itself. A freedom and 
spontaneity, as well as a kind and extent of expression, is offered 
in a Young People's service which will not be found to obtain else- 
where. Just these qualities are needed for proper training in 
worship. 

There is no place in the program of the Young People's Department 
for "opening exercises." The need is for an opening service of wor- 
ship whose program is carefully planned, and which has unity, con- 
sistency, and dignity. The hymns should be expressive of Christian 
truth, not over-sentimental, set to worthy tunes. Ditties and cheap, 
sentimental rimes sung to ragtime music are worse than valueless 
for purposes of real worship. There should be an atmosphere of 
fellowship and devotion, in which voluntary prayer and testimony 
will be encouraged. Some slight measure of adult guidance may be 
required, but for the most part the Young People's worship should 
be planned and directed by the young people themselves. If it is 
to be in the highest sense successful, the Young People must be able 



^Education in Religion and Morals, p. 264. 



120 THE PUPIL 

to feel that the service is their own, one for which they are re- 
sponsible, the success or failure of which depends on themselves. 

4. Training in Christian Conduct and Service. — The teacher is 
to think of himself as a friend and counselor, not as an oracle whose 
word is to be accepted as law. His function is to suggest, not to 
command ; to cooperate, not to compel ; to lead, not to drive. 

A chief need is to find definite religious and social tasks for Young 
People and engage them in doing them. Their future interest and 
activity in the work of the church will depend largely on the extent 
to which they are now enlisted and trained in Christian service. 
Other organizations win Young People by giving them occupation. 
They are ever ready for activity that has practical value. They will 
do any number of things in the name of the church if they can 
see results and feel that their efforts are appreciated, and in the 
doing they become strongly attached to the church. Little nothings, 
without real significance, will not appeal to them nor hold them. 

Altruism is nurtured by service. It grows by exercise. Without 
exercise it withers. In this is to be found a second reason why it 
is important, even necessary, to provide systematic, definite forms 
of service for Young People. 

Appeal may now be confidently made to the reason in matters of 
moral conduct. Commands as authority will not have great weight. 
Anything that looks like coercion is doomed to fail. Neither is 
guidance by suggestion as effective as earlier. The foundation of 
the moral law in reason should be shown. The conscience and the 
judgment should be addressed. Young People want to be shown 
why, not merely commanded to obey. 

Appeal should also be made to the will. Young People need to 
be convinced of the moral resources and of the power for achieve- 
ment in any line of worthy endeavor latent in their wills. Let them 
be shown what others have accomplished against great odds by force 
of will. Help them to understand that nothing in the way of right 
is impossible to them if the will to prevail is present. Appeal to 
the manhood and to the womanhood of the Young People ; ask things 
that are difficult, that require real effort and exertion for their ac- 
complishment; tell them frankly that they are difficult and at the 
same time make them feel that you rely on them to undertake and 
accomplish them, and you will put them in the way of doing worthy 
deeds as well as contribute to their growth in strength and useful- 
ness of character. 

There will usually be some whose resources of will seem to be 
deficient. The description of Sentimental Tommy fits them: "His 



LATER YOUTH 121 

emotions had taken a mortgage on his character and were squander- 
ing his moral resources ; ... his life had no unity or steadiness or 
consistency; ... it had enthusiasms, but no enthusiasm; it had bits 
of willing, but no persistent continuity of will." These Young People 
need to understand that feeling is not an end in itself ; that to 
stop short of the appropriate action suggested by the feeling is to 
deny complete life to it. They need to be enlisted in some worthy 
service that requires effort and determination and helped to stay by 
it until it is fully accomplished. Finally, they need to be led into 
the possession of strong moral and religious convictions — to hold to 
some great truths with all the mind and heart and strength. 

5. Results to be Expected. — We should expect to hold to the 
church and the school all of our Young People; we should expect all 
of them to be earnest Christians, members of the church, able to 
give a reason for their faith, loyal to all good, and active in Chris- 
tian service. 

a. Failure in the past. — We have to confess that results attained in 
the past have fallen far short of this. Most Sunday schools have 
held only a meager proportion of their boys through early and 
middle youth and into later youth — in some instances less than ten 
per cent, and of the girls not more than one half. True, the period 
of later youth presents its own peculiar difficulties. The development 
of individuality and of reason easily degenerates into self-sufficiency 
and intellectual pride. From sources outside of schools the youth 
gains a kind of "knowledge that puffeth up." If in an evil hour 
some serious lapse from virtue or righteousness occurs, a keen sense 
of guilt serves to erect a barrier between him and the church. Not 
infrequently desire for fellowship with other young people leads 
him into the company of those who never frequent either church 
or school. Sometimes his enthusiasm in his work tends to crowd 
out religious observances ; his absence is unnoticed ; he comes to 
feel that no one cares, and his heart is hardened against the church. 
None of these things is impossible to be overcome; but, because of 
our slackness or our lack of knowledge, all too often they are allowed 
to sunder the bond uniting the youth to the Sunday school and the 
church. We must overcome these difficulties. To fail in holding 
our own Young People is the greatest and the most inexcusable 
failure the church could possibly make. There could not be a more 
pitiable confession of weakness. 

b. Fruits of misdirection. — The whole story is not told in saying 
that Young People are not held to the church and Sunday school. 
The fruits of neglect and misdirection already in evidence in the 



122 THE PUPIL 

middle "teen" years now rapidly ripen. The curve of criminality 
ascends rapidly and reaches its climax at about twenty-two. Taking 
into account minor offenses, eighteen is the age of the greatest 
wrongdoing. The sex instinct is strengthened and frequently leads 
to immorality. The number of boys who "sow wild oats" is dis- 
couragingly large. Games of chance now have their strongest 
appeal, and this form of temptation is often yielded to. 

c. Conversion. — If the work in the earlier departments has been 
well done, few will come to the period of later youth without hav- 
ing previously committed themselves to a Christian life and to 
membership in the church. It should be expected that all who have 
not previously made the great life decision will do so now. Every 
effort should be made to accomplish this result. By faithful, direct 
instruction ; by personal appeal at the opportune time ; by the wise 
use of special occasions ; by the cooperation of pastor, superintend- 
ent, and classmates ; by the use of every means at command the 
earnest teacher will insure that these pupils shall be won to open, 
confessed discipleship. The danger line in religion is reached at 
twenty years, at about the middle of the period of later youth. Only 
one sixth of all Christians, it is estimated, are converted after 
twenty. With most of those not now Christians it is now or never. 
Teacher of young people, dare you not to allow one of your pupils 
to pass out of your hands not a professed Christian ! 

Conversion now is likely to be somewhat highly emotional. More 
or less conflict of impulses and feelings is certain to be involved. 
With most of those not Christians it is necessary for the emotions 
to be so stirred and strengthened as to break down the opposing 
barriers of distrust, selfish desires, conflicting purposes, and sinful 
indulgences. 

6. The Challenge of the Situation. — The task of teaching and 
training Young People for Christ and the church is not one for an 
odd hour. The work cannot be done in time that is left over from 
other duties and from pleasure. Young People will not wait our 
convenience. A thousand voices are calling them. Occasions crowd 
their lives. Causes without number bid for their service. They 
await the guidance of a leader, but the one who leads must know 
where he is going and why. 

Training, to be- effective, must be thorough. It cannot be accom- 
plished merely by chance teaching and fervent exhortations. It must 
be personal, persevering, constant. It must be patient, sympathetic, 
persistent. It requires knowledge, understanding, skill. Given all 
these, results will sometimes be disappointing, the most earnest 



LATER YOUTH 123 

efforts less than fully satisfactory. The mind of youth is not an 
empty vessel to be filled ; the heart of youth is not metal to be 
molded ; the life of youth is not a building to be constructed. All 
these figures have their value as illustrations, but youth is life — with 
all its. complexity, it's baffling mystery, its strength, its weakness, its 
glorious promise, its achievements, its failures, its inherent destiny. 
What are difficulties and heartaches and the sweating of blood when 
souls are to be trained in the service of the Lord of life? 

II. CONSTRUCTIVE TASK 

1. Prepare a brief statement of your own religious de- 
velopment during the "teen" years. Note especially the 
forces that came into your life to influence you reli- 
giously. 

2. Considering further the church with which you are 
most intimately associated: 

a. Describe the situation affecting Young People, noting 
every element in it. 

b. Prepare a statement on what is needed to make the 
work with the Young People entirely successful. 

III. MEMORY ASSIGNMENT 

"You tell me, doubt is devil-born. 

"I know not: one indeed I knew, 
In many a subtle question versed, 
Who touched a jarring lyre at first, 
But ever strove to make it true. 

"He fought his doubts and gathered strength. 
He would not make his judgment blind. 
He faced the specters of the mind 
And laid them : thus he came at length 

"To find a stronger faith his own." 

— Alfred Tennyson. 

IV. REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

In the Library 

1. Some adolescent difficulties: The Spiritual Life, Coe, Chap. II. 

2. Adolescent extremes: The Pedagogical Bible School, Haslett, pp. 187- 

203. 

3. An introduction to youth: Educational Evangelism, McKinley, pp. 

IT -24 



CHAPTER XII 

ADULT LIFE 

I. LESSON STATEMENT 

Growth does not wholly cease with the attainment of adulthood. 
Certain organs and parts of the body continue to grow until old age. 
Thus, adult life is not lived on a dead level; it has its periods, more 
or less well denned. Considered broadly, these may be stated to be: 
(a) Young manhood, from twenty-five to forty — the age of aggres- 
sive action. In this period the constructive and destructive forces 
in the body are about equal, (b) Middle life, from forty to sixty — 
the period of disillusionment. Many of the dreams of youth are 
parted with in this period. The destructive forces now gain the 
ascendancy; nevertheless, with most people this is the most pro- 
ductive period of life, (e) Elderly life, from sixty to seventy-five. 
Weakening of the bodily powers is likely to be marked, but with 
those of good physical inheritance, whose habits throughout life 
have been proper, this may be and not infrequently is a period of ripe 
fruitfulness. The world owes much to the services of its grand old 
men. (d) Advanced age, from seventy-five on — a period of in- 
creasing bodily weakness, terminating in dissolution. These periods 
are in terms of averages and are subject to individual variation. 
Thoroughness suggests separate treatment of each period ; but in 
a brief, elementary textbook adult life must be considered as a whole. 

I. THE ADULT 
I. Mind. 

a. Normal adult life is characterized by clear and sound judgment. 
The brain is normally the last organ of the body to begin to decline. 
In what the physician styles a "green old age" the intellectual powers 
are stronger than in any previous period of life. Reason is dominant. 
Not infrequently there is an aversion to the dogmatism of authority 
and a sharpening of the critical faculties. Experience has taught the 
mind to be wary and to be on the lookout for exaggeration. The 
power of mechanical memorization is decreased, but the pozver of 
retaining new knoivledge through association is strong. Perception 
is a slower process than in youth. "It is as though in early age every 
statement were admitted immediately and without inspection, while 

124 



ADULT LIFE 125 

in adult age every statement undergoes an instinctive process of 
cross-examination. " Similarly, the mind does not act so readily or 
quickly. There is more of consideration, and this retards action. 

b. With adult years the social feelings strengthen and zi'iden. Love 
of home and family deepens. The chums of youth become the firm 
friends of mature life. The welfare of the community and the state 
becomes an increasing concern. Fellowship with others is attractive. 
It is between twenty-five and forty that the largest proportion of men 
enter the fraternal organizations. Sympathies now may be readily 
broadened to include the unfortunate and the dependent. The 
heart of man beats in unison with the heart of the race. The aesthetic 
emotions are more fully developed. If it is nurtured, the interest in 
poetry, art, music, and the beautiful in nature steadily increases. The 
religious enthusiasm of youth becomes the steady purpose, the settled 
joy and peace of the soul that has found its abiding life center. This 
description is of normal religious development from youth up. If in 
the early years the heart is turned against God, the finer feelings and 
sentiments decline, the whole soul is dulled and hardened, and much 
of its capacity for sentiment and emotion is lost. 

c. The Adult of strong character has a resolute, w ell- trained, 
energetic will. He is able to undertake disagreeable tasks without 
self-parley or delay. He has schooled himself to endure hardships 
as a good soldier. Once committed to an undertaking, he carries it 
through against all obstacles. An act of will with the Adult is not 
as simple a process as with a child. For one thing, calculation enters 
more largely into it ; again, action is urged or impeded by pride and 
convention and prejudices and, most of all, by strongly developed 
habits. Nevertheless, the forces of a strong will are sufficient to 
break over all impediments and attain. On the other hand, all of us 
are acquainted with weak, irresolute persons of whose stand for right 
we are never certain, and who are always sure to be carried away 
by a strong wind of temptation. 

2. Characteristics and Needs of Adults. — In adult life individual- 
ity comes fully into its own. We can no longer describe moral and 
religious needs in general terms. All men and women have their 
own peculiar needs. Always complicated, the problem of moral 
and religious education becomes most complex in dealing with 
adults. We are likely to have in the adult school people from all 
walks of life and of widely varying attainments in intellect and in 
character. There will be some of very little education; others who 
are college graduates. There will be some who have grown up within 
the church and Sunday school, and there should be many from 



126 THE PUPIL 

among the unchurched masses — people who, if they were in the Sun- 
day school in childhood, either left it very early or were influenced 
little by it. Thinking especially of the latter class, those whom the 
Sunday school as an evangelising agency should desire to reach and 
help, we are likely to find the following conditions prominent : 

a. Deficient idealism. Life for many people has become dull and 
commonplace. It is a treadmill. It has much of routine and of 
monotony. The bright dreams of youth have not been realized and 
no others have come to take their place. The sharp edge has been 
worn off of ambition. There is a complacent toleration of things 
as they are, sometimes mingled with bitterness and not a little com- 
plaining. 

b. Religious indifference. There are multitudes of people within 
the church whose connection with it is merely nominal. They attend 
the preaching service seldom and other services not at all. Their 
lives perhaps have been busy and overburdened, and they have 
allowed themselves to lapse into religious torpor. Their neighbors 
and acquaintances outside of the church are wholly indifferent. 
There is a modicum of religious belief and sentiment hidden away 
in their nature, but they give no recognition to religion except when 
death or some overwhelming calamity stirs the almost dried-up 
fountains of the soul. 

c. Material-mind edness. The positive side of the last mentioned 
characteristic is that the affections are set on material things. With 
some life is a continual struggle for the things necessary to exist- 
ence. Hard conditions thrust material considerations continually 
to the forefront. With even a larger number prosperity has un- 
balanced spiritual judgment, with the result that the men are money- 
mad and the women think only of dress and display and amusement. 

d. Sensuousness. With many of our brother men the animal 
nature has obtained dominance. The sensual sins of men annually 
bring destruction and death to thousands of the weaker sex. The 
wide prevalence of diseases that are the certain crop of sensuality 
is attested by the testimony of physicians everywhere. The chief 
ally of the immoral life, intemperance in drink, is frightfully pre- 
valent. 

e. Petty sins. Many people who are never guilty of gross sensual 
crimes persistently keep their better self in the background. Capa- 
ble of strong resistance to evil, they allow their nobler purposes 
to be vanquished by petty sins. Little meannesses of disposition are 
constantly manifest. They exhibit spite, envy, jealousy, and hatred. 
They are stingy or cross or selfish. They are guilty of slander, 



ADULT LIFE 127 

backbiting, or circulating salacious stories. They commit little 
frauds, are deceptive and deceitful. They cannot be trusted; they 
will lie and steal. In politics they will resort, if need be, to bribery 
and fraud to gain their ends. In business the short yardstick, un- 
just weights and measures, adulteration of food products, harsh 
regulations governing employees, are all too common. 

These characteristics constitute an unattractive picture. We wish 
it might be truly declared overdrawn. It might be relieved some- 
what by a portrayal of virtuous qualities to be seen in the same 
people. No man or woman is wholly bad. Some of the worst of 
men have outstanding qualities of goodness. Some vile sinners are 
attractive, even lovable. 

2. THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE ADULT 

The opportunity of religious education is not now what it was 
earlier. Life is now settled in well-defined molds of thought, feel- 
ing, and will. Habits are formed and hardened. "It is not easy," 
said Martin Luther, "to teach an old dog new tricks, and therefore 
much of our labor is spent in vain." Nevertheless, the opportunity 
has not wholly passed. While the significance of childhood and 
youth as the periods of largest opportunity for moral and religious 
education is recognized as never before, there is coming to be also 
a clearer realization that education need not and should not cease 
with youth. Says President Eliot, "It has been too much the custom 
to think of education as an affair of youth ; it really should be the 
work of the whole life." 

, 1. The Evangelistic Opportunity. — There are certain conditions 
likely to be present in adult life which afford a special religious 
opportunity. 

Heart-hunger is often present. The youth was eager to try the 
world. He wanted to taste and see. He was impatient with anything 
which seemed to compel restraint. He was unwilling to give up 
promised joys and pleasures. If the Adult is disillusioned concern- 
ing his own career, he is also disillusioned concerning the vain pomp 
and false promises of "the world." Promised satisfactions have 
turned to Dead-Sea apples at his touch. The glitter and glamour 
of sin are gone. The scales have fallen from his eyes, and he sees 
things as they are. While he may be wedded to his idols, it is likely 
that at heart he despises himself for what he is and longs to be 
something different. \ 

If the soul has not found its life-center in God, there are in- 
evitably deep spiritual longings. Under the indifference and utter 



128 THE PUPIL 

neglect of religion there is still a sense of deficiency and the faint 
stirrings of spiritual purpose. There are hours when the soul cries 
out for the satisfaction of these long-denied needs. There are times 
when revolt against the dominance of the lower self is threatened. 

There is need for comfort and inspiration. Life is full of hard 
experiences for most people. Disappointment, grief, and loss are 
prevalent. The burdened hearts are many. The hard, incessant 
struggle. discourages many. People are hungry for consolation and 
for spiritual inspiration, and they seek the place where these are 
given. 

These conditions constitute an opportunity peculiar to adult life. 
In meeting it the need is not so much for information as for inspira- 
tion. It is not merely facts that, are needed, but the stimulation of 
hope and faith and courage and spiritual desire. These Adults need 
to see Jesus Christ and to be assured that a Christlike-life is possible 
to them. They need to have vision imparted, the renewing and 
spiritualizing of the lost vision of youth. All this is to be done 
not through exhortation or preaching — that is the function of the 
preaching service of the church — but through the close, intimate 
unfolding to them of the Word of God in teaching. 

2. Instruction. — For many Adults the Bible class has a distinct 
mission of religious instruction. Not infrequently the clearing away 
of misconceptions and prejudices and the laying of a foundation 
of Christian truth are necessary before the assent of the mind can 
be gained to a Christian life. Those who have become Christians 
in mature life, or who, committing themselves to a religious life 
in youth, were not instructed, need to know the fundamental truths 
of Christianity. The modern aversion to dogma ought not to blind 
us to the need for an understanding of the great doctrines of the 
Christian faith. Our religion is now being opposed on our own 
soil by other ancient faiths, not to speak of innumerable modern 
cults. The intelligent Christian must be able to give a reason for 
the faith that is within him. The principles of Protestantism, as 
opposed to Romanism, should be understood. 

Again, many Christians have narrow views of the religious life. 
Their conception of the relation of religion to business, to social 
relationships, to politics, is superficial and narrow. They need social 
teaching. They need to know the teachings of the prophets, of 
Jesus, and of the apostles on social and civic duties. The range of 
their interests and efforts is circumscribed. They need to be made 
acquainted with the purposes of God for the world, that their 
prayers and deeds may go out to the ends of the earth. 



- ADULT LIFE 129 

These considerations make it clear that a broad, comprehensive 
curriculum of religious education for Adults is required in order 
to meet the needs of the situation. A uniform course for all class-es 
is altogether inadequate. A variety of courses should be available, 
that the needs of widely different groups may be met. These 
courses should be offered as electives with each group free to choose 
its own subject of study. 

The method of teaching will vary with different classes. Usually 
it will be the method of free discussion, in which the teacher will 
be the leader. 

3. Development of the Feelings. — The organized class can do 
much through carefully planned committee work to develop the 
social feelings. The ministry to poverty, sickness, or suffering 
through carrying out a class assignment stimulates altruistic feelings, 
especially when it follows upon the right kind of teaching. This 
is intimately connected with the building of Christian character. 
Sympathy, brotherly love, and kindness are at the basis of Christian 
ethics. 

Effort for the development of the (esthetic feelings should not be 
neglected, even though the response now is not so ready as earlier. 
Some appreciation of the beautiful in art and literature and nature 
may be gradually built up. 

4. Exercise of the Will. — The real test of the teacher's work is in 
getting the will to act. Facility in exciting feelings is not the meas- 
ure of successful teaching. A chief part of the significance and 
worth of emotions and sentiment is in their power to move the will. 
If they stop short of that, they are barren and unfruitful. The 
appeal of Jesus is primarily to the will, rather than to the intellect 
or the feelings. "Follow me" is his command. "Whosoever shall 
do the will of God, the same is my brother." "If any man will do 
his will, he shall know of the doctrine." The teacher of Adults does 
well to emulate the Master. Appeal to the will. Impress the idea 
that the man and the woman can live a Christian life if they will ; 
they can do a worthy work for God if they will. Point out the 
path and bid them in God's name follow it. 

5. Direction of Activity. — For not a few the chief function of 
the Adult Department will be as a school of practice. It will be 
the means by which the rich feelings and good purposes of earnest 
Christians will be utilized. It will suggest ways and plans of service 
and see that they are carried out. It will thus educate and train 
good Christians to be better Christians. The latent sentiment and 
conviction of many a congregation is sufficient to effect potent re- 



130 THE PUPIL . 

forms and accomplish much good. The Adult Department, may 
provide the means of awakening and applying these and thus benefit 
both the individuals themselves and the community. 

6. Results to be Expected. — The teacher of Adults should have 
patience. The results of his labors with those who are Christians 
and with those who are not will not appear in a day. The efforts 
of weeks and months and years in teaching the unevangelized may 
culminate some day in a sudden breaking up of the great deeps of 
the nature ; in a conversion that will be a profound, revolutionary 
change, a wonderful manifestation of the power of God to trans- 
form and renew a sinful human being. For this let the teacher pray 
and believe. With others there may be little perceptible change in 
years. Let the teacher not despair. Let him have faith in the truth 
of God and in human nature. His work as a teacher of the gospel, 
if it be well and faithfully done, will not be in vain. The trans- 
forming power of the truth will in time be in evidence. 

With the members of the Adult Department the church school is 
to do its final work. It is to make complete Christians — patriotic 
and loyal citizens ; conscientious and sympathetic neighbors ; self- 
sacrificing and devoted parents ; true, faithful, loving, obedient sons 
and daughters of God. It is to cooperate with God in his supreme 
work of making full-orbed men, described by President Faunce as 
"men of keen sense, of trained intellect, of warm hearts ; men rich 
in imagination and emotion ; men of power to resolve, to initiate, 
to administer, to achieve; power to see swiftly, judge accurately, 
decide immediately; to love deeply and hate persistently and grow 
forever — men such as all the past of human history now should 
culminate in producing." 

II. MEMORY ASSIGNMENT 

"Grow old along with me! 
The best is yet to be — 
The last of life, for which the first was made: 
Our times are in His hand 
Who saith, 'A whole I planned, 
Youth shows but half ; trust God ; see all, nor be afraid/ " 

— Robert Browning. 

III. REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

In the Library 

i. Principles of adult-class study: Adult Class Study, Wood, Chap. III. 
2. The breadth of religious experience: The Religion of a Mature Mind, 
Coe, Chap. VIII. 



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